in.visible.ink blog

unhappy trainer girl (warning: this blog post contains self-pity and ranting)

2011-01-15T12:09:00.007+01:00

so what i had feared has become a reality now. on thursday, four days into work this year, i was told that my contract for one of the two projects i am on at 'die berater' (the company i have worked for most of the past seven years) would not be renewed in mid-february. which means that instead of 37 hours there will only be 21 hours of teaching, which in turn means not enough money to live on. what we get paid is ridiculous anyway, but the money i make for teaching 21 hours plus (unpaid) prep work is less than if i worked at a supermarket checkout for about 20 hours. there is a slight chance that they need someone on another project, but i am not counting on that. which, of course, means that i have to look around for a completely new thing. which, in turn, i don't fancy for several reasons: i have always felt comfortable at the company, i have some super colleagues, i know the ins and outs of the job, the market isn't exactly ... um ... huge, the AMS (unemployment services) has to cut down on classes and therefore institutes whose clients are primarily unemployed people have to let trainers go. i had hoped for some stability this year, financially and health-wise, and the plan was to try for a baby and move into a bigger flat. sigh. this new situation doesn't exactly help to get rid of my anxiety and depression either.

what's bugging me most at the moment is the phrases that people throw my way, be it those responsible for the projects or colleagues, friends, acquaintances, but mainly the former. for months now i've been told that i do a great job, that i should not worry about not having enough work this year, that i am such an asset. okay, i am not the only one they let go (3 out of 8 were told goodbye), but still. being told that i am no longer needed sandwiched between statements such as "we really love your work" and "i really do not want to let you go" and "we are so, so sorry" and praise for my contribution to the team, well, it doesn't really make me feel better. the obvious question that comes to mind is: "then why ARE you doing it?"

then, again sandwiched between the above phrases, it's "you know, [insert name/s] has a family" and "[insert name] is much older and won't find another job so easily" and so on. so does that mean that if i happened to be as good or not as good a teacher but had a young child, i would still be on the team? if i happened to be 59 instead of 39, i wouldn't have to leave that team?

apparently they also talked to one colleague about working only part-time, asking her if she wanted that. well, guess what, she doesn't. neither, by the way, do i.

and then i keep being told that with my qualifications and experience and being the reliable, punctual, fun, lovely, fabulous, super-motivated trainer that i am, i won't have any problems finding a new job. yeah right, since all these things obviously counted for so bloody much at this place. if all that doesn't help me keep a job, how is it going to land me one out there, where all i can do is claim that i am [insert strength/qualification] but have not even proven it to anybody? that is just twisted, really, and it actually offends me.

and then the nasty suspicion does creep in that the two weeks sick leave in november and telling my project coordinator about my burnout were a mistake, that they influenced their decision.

so, once again, pretty much everything is up in the air. i'll have to ask around and network and apply for jobs (not easy to fit into a 50+ hours working week plus commuting plus the photography classes). another thing that doesn't help is that the last time i briefly worked for a different company from die berater, disaster struck: the company, venetia, went bankrupt and i will never see those approx. 3500 euros they still owe me. there's been too much change and instability in my life over the past 4 years, and i am finding it very, very hard to be positive about this whole situation.

having gotten this off my chest and having been allowed to feel sorry for myself, i want to share the video of j. k. rowling's commencement speech at harvard with you. i've loved this since i first heard it a couple of years ago, and one of my poet friends posted it on facebook today, quite appropriate at the moment, what with me thinking about failure a lot lately.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

today's song of the day is by the delightful sia and includes these lines:

You see fear is only holding us back
Look closely amongst all your peers
There is usually one thing that keeps
Us off track
It is fear, it is fear, it is fear

indeed.

and in order to end on a lighter note than this, here's a little story connected to one of my photos from istanbul:

i love the internet for things like this: a myriam from gatineau, canada saw this picture i took in istanbul in september 2010 on my flickr photo stream and contacted me to tell me she had pictures of the very same cat and its siblings. we eventually figured out that we met the three cats within a few days of each other and exchanged pictures of them. :)

song of the day: fear by sia.

breathing life into my blog

2011-01-07T12:11:00.008+01:00

i thought i'd try and breathe a little life into my blog once more ... i am planning to post songs, photos, and poetry if and when it happens. we'll see how that goes.

the last couple of months haven't been too great. i was once again diagnosed with (mild) burnout, i had anxiety/panic and depression issues once again, particularly during the second half of november, when i was off work for a full two weeks, and then again around christmas. the doctor wanted to get me back on the meds, but i refused to. i am just not prepared to go through the side effects again, so i decided to see how life goes without medication, though if a certain line is crossed, i might have no choice but to go back on the sertralin. i had a few panic attacks, once had to take half a xanor, and i am very grateful for having heinz by my side, who's been super-supportive.

i haven't talked about my issues as much as i used to, at the beginning it was because i felt pretty much like a total loser and i withdrew. now that the holidays are over and my friends are back in vienna - and i am feeling better - i am sure it'll be easier to talk about it. funny though - i opened up to two people who i don't know that well (a former student, and an old friend who's reappeared in my life) - and both of them rewarded my openness with opening up themselves: and both of them have burnout and anxiety and depression issues as well! it just shows me, once again, that i am not alone, and that more people than we imagine have to deal with these things. i have been seeing my therapist more regularly, and i hope to come to terms with a couple of problems/issues.

it certainly hasn't helped that things at work have been changing quite a lot, and not particularly for the better. i am not sure what happens when my contract finishes on 18 february - there is a possibility that i will then only get a contract for 21 hours of teaching (instead of 37), which might be healthier, but would also mean that i'd have too little money to live on, which is a bit of a down side. so i have been worrying a lot, and we all know i am very good at that.

for christmas, i got what i wanted, only not quite the way i'd imagined it: i said i'd actually prefer to be left alone and not see people etc. so as soon as we arrived at heinz's family's in styria, i was down with the flu. the fever knocked me out for a few days, but the virus affected my respiratory tracts quite badly, and i am just now getting rid of the cold completely.

so my long christmas break was very different from what i'd planned it to be - i didn't get to see my family, i didn't take all those long walks i'd meant to take, i didn't take many photographs, i didn't read as much as i'd planned, i didn't meet many friends, i still haven't done my photography homework. instead i really looked after myself in terms of getting over that flu bug completely, i stayed in bed and slept more than i actually thought i could sleep. i did a lot of filing and putting things in order, i finally finished editing the istanbul pictures taken on our trip there in september, and heinz and i cleaned the kitchen top to bottom and inside out. i've been tinkering with older unfinished poems and scribbled down a few new ideas, and i even wrote a complete poem. and now that i have become used to sleep-ins and doing what i felt like doing, it's one weekend between me and the stressful world of work!

i've spent a lot of time with leonard cohen lately - his music, his lyrics, his poems, a documentary, his biography. i have so much admiration and respect for his talent, for the man, and though i have been a fan for a long time, i feel that my admiration has never been quite what it is now. whatever music comes and goes, i am sure leonard is here to stay in my life.

but of course, i have discovered singers and bands over the past year that were either new or not very well-known to me. there's the highly talented lisa lindal, the gorgeous and funny sia, brilliant singer sissel, the incredibly swinging ditty bops, norman palm, jill barber, melody gardot, wendy bucklew, the fabulous eilen jewell, the trishas, amelia curran, the adorable kate rusby, chris garneau, emily rodgers, the fleet foxes, the handsome family, and very recently swedish sister act first aid kit. lots of ladies on this list!

i've spent some time (re)reading poetry collections by arlene ang, kelli russell agodon, jayne pupek (who passed away much too soon last august), ros barber, john siddique, carolyn guinzio, valerie fox. 2010 was more successful in terms of poetry than 2009 and 2008, though that was not exactly such a challenge. i managed to write some poems, and i sent out a handful of submissions, all of which resulted in publications. that was encouraging - especially because several of the published poems were brand-new. looks as if i still have it in me! i also did a reading with sylvia petter, which she'd invited me to. i worked hard to prepare for the reading, and it paid off. i loved every minute of it, and though the audience was small, the people were incredibly disciplined and very appreciative. i definitely want to do another reading this year, we shall see what opportunities come up.

i finally went and enrolled for photography classes last september. it's a ten-month course, and it is very interesting, demanding, time-consuming, and fun. i have learned a lot, i've been experimenting, and i look forward to learning more.

and here's my song not only of today, but the last few days - such sadness, such beautiful lyrics, such a wonderful video, and the voices of stuart staples and the beautiful lhasa, who died so young early last year:

song of the day: that leaving feeling by stuart staples & lhasa de sela.

setback

2010-04-28T14:51:00.003+02:00

so it has happened. the thing i'd been dreading since i went off the SSRIs. i had a panic attack.

i felt better each day, but yesterday i just wasn't myself at all: felt like crying half the day, and i managed to fight off attacks several times throughout the afternoon, but i was so touchy and moody and tense by the time heinz came home that some silly misunderstanding just sent me over the edge. and that triggered the first panic attack in quite a while. i just couldn't breathe, and the fact that i was crying hysterically didn't exactly help. my hands and arms went numb, and breathing into a paper bag didn't help for ages. so i decided to take a xanax. which, of course, put me to sleep in no time. the sound of the rain outside helped me relax, too. heinz, as usual, was a star.

this episode really scared me. i guess part of me had been anticipating a panic attack, and perhaps that was what actually brought it on. yesterday afternoon i kept wondering whether i could "do it". stay off the SSRIs, that is. whether i'd be "strong enough" - to cope with anything. once the attack began, it was all "see? i knew it! i knew i couldn't do it ... i will never get through this ... it'll always be like this!" and of course that scared me even more, so it spiralled out of control. i just felt like a total loser. when i sit down and calmly think about it all, i know this isn't true, but yesterday evening it was.

my only hope is that this was the one dreaded panic attack and that i just had to get it over with, and that's the end of it.

thanks to my lovely friends who have been concerned about me since i went off the SSRIs - you rock.

song of the day: mama leone by laibach.

withdrawal

2010-04-23T13:42:00.004+02:00

i went off my SSRIs (sertralin) on tuesday. so this is day five off the pills - for the first time since late october 2007. i am still taking 25mg of trittico (for sleeping / as a mild anti-depressant), but would like to get off those in a few months' time as well.

i'd reduced the dosage of sertralin twice - from 75mg to 50 and then 25, and both times my stomach was a little upset, and i was a little moody for a couple of days, but that was that. once i'd decided that now was the right time to quit (doctor had given okay months ago, said when i felt ready, i should just go ahead), i did. lately i had nearly forgotten to take the pills on some days, and i didn't really expect this to be a big deal. but it's not as easy as i thought it would be. now that i've decided to quit, all i seem to be thinking about is my little white helpers. not a big surprise, though, is it, when i've just not been myself these past five days?

at first i did not even make the connection - i thought i was so exhausted because of the pollen bothering me, or that i'd caught a cold. i didn't think that the effect would be that immediate. but after two days i did some research, asked around a little, and well ... they do have a name for this: SSRI discontinuation syndrome. doesn't that just sound marvellous? long list of symptoms, some of them sounding very familiar: exhaustion - check. occasional headaches - check. stomach problems - check. occasional dizziness - check. occasional sweating - check. temperature - check. and also what they describe as "brain shivers" - check. i have these minor black-outs, it's like arriving at the end of a very short period - of a second or a few seconds or even a split second - and not quite knowing how i got there. i find that sometimes my feet or hands or my brain won't do what i want them to do, at least not immediately - very disconcerting, that. i find it hard to concentrate. i don't sleep well. during the day i sometimes have the feeling i might just fall asleep standing up. i dream a lot, even more than i usually do. i am moody, feel on the verge of tears much of the time. and all this because my brain is trying to find some sort of balance again. i've tried to sleep as much as i can, i try to relax and let myself be distracted without doing too much, and i have my lovely man who supports me and puts up with my moods. i'll see how the weekend goes, and if things don't change, i'll consult my doctor. i just don't want to go back on the pills anymore. i can do what i want to do without them. enough, i say.

on friday, one student felt a panic attack coming on, and when i said "oh i know about those" in the process of helping her, people were surprised, i think. i've often had that reaction: "depressed? panic disorder? you?" but one thing i have learned is that you really cannot tell who has experienced these nasty things. the most outgoing, fun, confident people might tell you that they are being treated for these things, or have been through them in the past. there's just no telling. turned out that some people in my class - and there were only 9 of them on friday - know from their own experience or second-hand (daughters, friends, colleagues, ...). so for a while i abandoned what we'd been doing, answered questions, listened to others' accounts, and it was the right thing to do. i've always been open about this, and i think it does help to show people that they are not the only ones, and to raise awareness. one student wanted to know what to do if anybody around him had a panic attack - he actually seemed pretty scared that he might not know how to react, and he obviously had not realised how common such things are. so, here i am, blogging about this once again. who knows, it might help somebody out there, as it has done in the past.

apart from going off my SSRIs, the birch pollen have been extremely annoying, and i am very much looking forward to the day when i can breathe normally again. and go for a walk outside in the lovely spring weather.

i've been offered more work for five weeks in may and june, which is very good news. this means that i've allowed myself to go away for a few days in may, most likely croatia, just like last year.

song of the day: across the universe (live) by sean lennon, rufus wainwright & moby.

smitten

2010-04-17T20:58:00.004+02:00

remember the singer/songwriter i mentioned last time i blogged? lisa lindal. well - i was fortunate enough to see/hear her live on thursday. after a very, very weird estonian movie - the temptation of st tony - that opened the nordic film festival at urania, there was a reception sponsored by the estonian embassy, and the delightful miss lindal flew in from sweden especially for the occasion. both heinz and i had enjoyed some of her songs on the internet, and lisa's performance certainly did not disappoint.

i'd dropped her a note on facebook, and she'd written back and added me as a friend, and i bumped into her a few minutes after the movie, and i said hello. i was surprised at how small she is! petite. but so full of energy - she seemed taller once she was playing the piano and singing.

she opened with moon river, went on to sing a few other classics and cover versions (somewhere over the rainbow - very, very beautiful! - as well as a tom waits song and the terrific cover version of crazy) as well as her own songs (among them my current favourites light in the tunnel and boyfriends make you lazy). unfortunately, as it was a reception in one large room, there was a lot of talking, and i wished people would pay more attention. many of those standing or sitting near the front, however, were drawn in more and more as the performance went on.

the gig confirmed that the girl really can sing. and she can write lovely songs. some of her lyrics are wonderfully quirky. i'd love to talk to her about her influences and the creative process some day. maybe, maybe.

heinz and i had a chance to talk to her after the performance, which was nice. we contemplated going to bratislava for her gig yesterday evening, but it would have been rather stressful for heinz, and we might not have made it on time, so we didn't go after all. lisa seems to be stuck in vienna now, what with the volcano coughing up ash in faraway iceland, so who knows, she might give some spontaneous concerts. ;)

if you haven't done so yet, do check her out. she is well worth it. her album's due out in autumn.

apart from this my latest obsession: i am enjoying time with my current english students, they are fun, motivated, interested. we had almost a week of rain, which pissed most people off, but meant pollen relief for people like me. iceland's been sending volcanic greetings to much of europe, thanks. i feel like writing much of the time, but can't seem to be able to string three lines together - aargh. i received the very beautiful and enjoyable press 1 anthology The Red Room - one of my poems, equinox, is in very good company there. thanks to arlene ang, valerie fox and jordan schilling for their great work at press 1!

song of the day: the light in the tunnel by lisa lindal.

music and more music

2010-04-06T21:18:00.004+02:00

heinz and i went to see the delightful holly cole at konzerthaus in march. i'd never seen her live, but had heard people raving about her performances. it was an evening of almost exclusively tom waits songs - and if i can't have tom waits performing tom waits, then i'll very happily listen to holly performing his work. she is good on recordings, but she is simply amazing live. she just makes each song totally unique, and her band's a perfect match for her. the highlight was perhaps a children's song that her father used to sing to his kids: holly and the percussionist sat down on the floor, using heels, hands, chairs as instruments. all the more charming and touching because her father was in the audience. she's also charming, funny, and chatty, which i love. great night out in a beautiful concert hall - and for half the money they charge for most pop concerts these days.

very recently i discovered swedish singer lisa lindal. i came across her by coincidence, read that she would be performing live on the opening night of the scandinavian film festival here in vienna on 15 april and had to check her out online. absolutely worth it. visit youtube for videos of her performing a terrific cover version of gnarls barkley's "crazy" (accompanied by piano and violin!) and a few of her songs, stop by her myspace page or her website, where you can listen to several of her songs. (and yes, there are similarities between her and tori amos, but they're certainly not identical twins.) she rocks. and you heard it from me. ;)

song of the day: boyfriends make you lazy by lisa lindal.

lucille clifton (1936-2010)

2010-02-14T21:12:00.003+01:00

poet lucille clifton died yesterday. here's one of my favourite poems by her:

sorrows

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful         who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls         clicking their bony fingers

envying our crackling hair
our spice filled flesh

they have heard me beseeching
as I whispered into my own

cupped hands       enough not me again
enough       but who can distinguish

one human voice
amid such choruses of   desire

-- lucille clifton

song of the day: man of the hour by pearl jam.

monthiversary

2010-02-14T12:38:00.003+01:00

heinz and i first met 18 months ago yesterday - 13 august 2008, so we spent a lovely, relaxing saturday together. :)

song of the day: life is sweet by natalie merchant.

romantik!

2010-02-10T18:55:00.002+01:00

i'd been looking forward to last night's element of crime concert since i first heard about the 2010 tour. it was my 4th - the venue once again gasometer, which is far from perfect, but unfortunately vienna doesn't seem to have any decent venues of that size. anyway: the band was great - as usual, i should add. i'm tempted to say that this was actually the best EOC concert i've been to. the musicians are all very, very good, i'm smitten with sven regener's trumpet(-playing). they've been playing together for ages, which could lead to boredom, i suppose, but boring is not a word that comes to mind when i think of last night's performance.

it was so very cool that they played really old songs, even some of the very early days EOC songs in english, in addition to many songs from the latest album. i was particularly pleased that they played "am ende denk ich immer nur an dich", which is my favourite song on their latest album - such delightful lyrics; "jetzt musst du springen", which is an old fave of mine; "schwere see".

EOC are not a band for those who are looking for something new on every album, let alone in every song. sven regener (songwriter, poet, writer, mastermind) himself says that he's been writing the same few songs over and over again since the early 90s. but then they never sound exactly the same, there are no identical twins. there's always a twist somewhere (both in music and lyrics), a fabulous new phrase or pun, an image that is striking in its simplicity and/or its "i've-never-looked-at-this-in-quite-the-same-way" originality (for want of a better word). regener is a keen observer of the everyday, and - in my opinion - the most poetic german songwriter. there are quite a few lines in his lyrics that have made me think "i wish *i* had thought of that!", which is a great compliment.

of course, being a poet myself, i have a weakness for wordplay, for unexpected word choices in strange places that can open up whole new worlds. and something i loved about last night was the fact that there were visible and audible reactions to certain images regener painted with words: a smile, a laugh, a snicker, a "ha!", or clapping - occasionally i could tell that the person had probably never heard that song before, or never paid attention to that particular part. it's fantastic to be among people who appreciate that. it's a sign that poetry IS appreciated, enjoyed.

thanks, sven regener, thanks element of crime, for a lovely evening: "vielndank!"

review & set list in german @ fm4: Agentenfunkchansons und Zahlen

song of the day: am ende denk ich immer nur an dich by element of crime.

colds, headaches, crime, and poetry

2010-02-04T19:01:00.005+01:00

my students apparently brought enough germs to the classroom to make me sick, too, so i had to stay home from work for a couple of days. blah.

at least i had time to read a novel that managed to give me nightmares two nights in a row - "menschenteufel" (which translates as "human devil") by marcus rafelsberger. i am not normally a fan of crime novels, but i was curious, as rafelsberger is an old schoolmate's husband. quite well-written, but then i don't have much to compare it to. but it certainly held my attention! a bonus was that the book is set in vienna, and therefore i repeatedly came across places i know. i am now ready to begin another jasper fforde novel - yay!

another book i just (re-)read is jayne pupek's poetry collection "forms of intercession". if i had to sum up the book in one word, it would be: brave. it's been a while since i read a book of poems that confronted me with so much beauty and so much unpleasantness - in short: everything human. pupek doesn't stop where others might not dare to go, and that makes her stand out. there are poems that i've returned to four, five, ten times - and i am sure will go back to again. it's as if they grabbed me by the throat when i first read them, and have not quite let go. while the best way to learn about life is still, well, living it, but books like pupek's come a close second.

my muse probably didn't want to catch my cold and has been quite for a few days, but before she took that time-out, we created this (not decided on the [sub]title yet):

069
Thulium (Tm)

I swear I'm only human, wishing I could disappear
-- Amelia Curran, "The Mistress"

This is what happens when gods get drunk:
You start a conversation and ice is left to melt

in fancy drinks. Hours later, three hasty kisses
and the cold metal of his ring against your cheek.

By then it's already too late for the promise
you made to yourself: this ends right here.

The first time, you make butterflies dance
on the blanket. You measure time in heartbeats

and the cooling of sweaty limbs. Months later,
it's pale green sheets and the ticking of a clock

that translates as judgement - wrong, sad,
wrong, sad - and stirs the beginnings of loathing,

rushes the slow dying of love. Gravedigger
you call yourself, late at night, when you wake

from dreams that are part of the high price
you pay. Gravedigger. And you are digging deep.

You have 69 random words in your pockets –
for a love letter, for a note of farewell.

The one word that's missing is hope. The gods
who tempted you are fast asleep. Like him

in that other place, where your mind can't go,
which you'd still know by its scent: routine, love,

and lies. Your shadow sleeps between them,
but that doesn't comfort you. When this is over,

there won't be any sympathy, just as there are
no gifts: you are the beggar, you are the thief.

song of the day: breathe (2 am) by anna nalick.

the lady of the poems

2010-01-31T18:08:00.003+01:00

it occurred to me today that my poetic life over the past 3-4 years kind of fits the lord of the rings trilogy:

I - the fellowship of ITWS: my poem-a-day times at inside the writer's studio poetry board
II - the two lost years: as good as nothing happening between end of 2007 and end of 2009
III - the return of the muse: looks like "it" is back - whatever "it" is that makes me want to write, that makes me find the words, that channels my ideas. i am beginning to trust this/myself again, which is, well: terrific! :)

other news:

autralian open: justine henin lost her comeback grand slam to serena williams - no fairy tale ending there, but many flashes of brilliance. good to have her back. roger federer did it again ... andy murray just was no match for him.

i was unfaithful to my hairdresser. so far, no regrets.

i'm not surprised that my students seem to have given me some bug - i found out 2 hours ago that i have a temperature. this does not make me particularly happy.

i'm hooked on sarah blasko, it seems (song of the day - brilliant, brilliant cover version of a 1980s cold chisel song). and checking out clare & the reasons.

song of the day: flame trees by sarah blasko.

poet(r)ic(k)s

2010-01-26T16:50:00.004+01:00

shortly after i posted a note re: swapping chapbooks on facebook, steve meador (editor of hanging moss journal) set up a group called the chapbook & literary journal exchange. i invited all my poet friends and acquaintances, and hope they are spreading the word. if you are not one of my contacts and happen to read this - do join. i've now exchanged books with ken pobo, rachel dacus, and valerie fox, and i only have one copy of "small confessions and pebbles of regret" left. i am more of a chapbook swapper than buyer - part of the reason is that i don't live in the usa, but mainly i love the idea of those books being some sort of special currency that buys you somebody else's words. i'm wondering why nobody else i know (including me!) had the fantastic idea of setting up such an exchange group. sometimes you gotta love the web. :)

so anyway: top of my reading list: ken pobo's trina and the sky (love the title!), rachel dacus's another circle of delight, valerie fox's the rorschach factory and valerie fox & arlene ang's bundles of letters including a, v and epsilon.

yesterday while putting new sheets on the bed, this line came to me out of nowhere: "nothing bad can happen to a girl with a goldfish voice". i sat down at the computer, wrote down some random words, turned to eclectica magazine for more random words (they have a special challenge in every issue, check it out!), did some research on element 113 - ununtrium - and began to write. the words just flowed. it was just like back in the good old days when i wrote a poem every day. it's such a fabulous feeling, and i know why i've missed it so badly. the new poem is called alice gets lost on her way to wonderland, and the first line i had is the final line of the poem - as happens so often with me. however, i changed "voice" to "mouth".

maybe i should change the sheets more often. :)

music-wise, i am quite smitten with sarah blasko at the moment - a great singer/songwriter from australia. check her out. i have my friend rachael to thank for the recommendation.

song of the day: all i want by sarah blasko.

2010-01-23T18:56:00.003+01:00

with my return to teaching, getting to know a new group and - of course - prep work, writing was pushed aside a bit this week. however, i've been working on a poem that i find quite difficult to handle, a poem in which recently uncovered issues in connection with my childhood and my mother are the main theme. the working title is "Portrait of Mother in Eleven Questions". i think i've got almost all i want to say, but am tinkering with the lines and words on and off. we'll see where it takes me / i take it.

nice/good/happy things this week: work. nice feedback. a colleague who'd obviously missed me. not as much chocolate. hooking up with an old school friend i had not seen in 10 years. a walk in sunshine & snow. a good film (winds of sand, women of rock) with a good friend. a farmville extension. a 27 page letter from my dear aussie friend rachael - always a treat. an interesting therapy session. a pineapple - cheap and juicy. a dream in which george clooney flirted with me in german and english. heinz.

song of the day: rock like a baby by elizabeth harper.

terms of endearment

2010-01-18T22:32:00.002+01:00

ah. just watched "terms of endearment", which i had not seen for ages. you gotta love shirley maclaine!

here: me. today.

song of the day: path of thorns (terms of endearment) by sarah mclachlan.

chapswap

2010-01-17T10:53:00.002+01:00

i have two spare copies of my chapbox "the secret meanings of greek letters" (dancing girl press, 2007, sold out) and of my collaboration project with alex stolis "small confessions and pebbles of regret" (rubicon press, 2008, sold out). is anybody interested in swapping chapbooks? if so, leave a comment on this post, email me, or contact me on facebook.

for more info, see these blog posts:
small confessions ...
secret meanings ...

song of the day: samson by regina spektor.

reactivation

2010-01-16T16:01:00.011+01:00

so it's been nearly ten months since my last blog post: if i made any new year resolutions, one of them would be to blog more regularly this year!

i think one reason why i did not blog as much as i used to is the fact that nothing was happening with my writing: almost nothing new, no submissions sent out, no publication. i've been quite far from poetry (makes a nice title, doesn't it?) these past two years. over the last ten days, however, i have written five poems - that is two more than in 2009! they are all for my "elemental" project, the poems based on the elements of the perdiodic table. it is tough, trying to get back into the habit of writing regularly. today was the first time that i actually thoroughly enjoyed working on a poem again, it was like a flicker of how it used to be. i've also done a lot of research on the elements i still need to deal with - and it seems as if i have done most of the really inspiring, interesting ones. *s*

"there, between / heifer and cup-bearer, beloved of the god: the veiled bride, mistress// of the night. beneath the netting, her freckles seem to shift, like/constellations."

(from: europium (eu) - between io and ganymede, eleven minutes to six)

i don't want to dwell on the past too much, but in a nutshell: it was a good year, well, most of it.

moving was stressful, but it's great to live with heinz! i had expected to miss my old flat, at least occasionally, but i didn't. of course, the place is not big enough in the long run - so flat/house hunting is one of the major projects of 2010.

work: lots of lovely students, challening and highly interesting translation project (encyclopedia of western european languages) - although there seems to be hardly any freelance job without a fight for the money. i am going back to work on monday - finally! it has been too long.

we took a few short(ish) trips: croatia in may, carinthia (around my hometown) in july, south tyrol in september. lots of nature, hiking, swimming, tons of photos.

my social life suffered a little when i had lots of work on my plate and i turned into some kind of recluse for a while. fortunately i managed to break the habit in autumn, with the viennale film festival coming in handy.

what i found hard to deal with was the fact that i had to increase the dose of SSRI again in autumn, following some anxiety/panic incidents. i had a couple of hallucinations, too. i am sure that this was partly due to my confronting some of the demons from my past, and partly due to being worried about work (it was uncertain whether the english teaching project would be continues). i am seeing my therapist regularly, and we have tackled a few tough issues. but i have been feeling much better over the last couple of weeks or so. heinz has been a source of constant support and encouragement. :)

other stuff includes: farmville addiction (decreasing!), scrabble addiction, christmas in carinthia and styria, bob hewis's unexpected death, loved the book "the book thief", miss the writing community, 72nd out of about 1400 in the vienna photo marathon, boy group: otto, pruno & heinrich, facebook addiction, photography, the untimely death of one of my favourite singers - lhasa de sela, aunt resi's 100th birthday, puzzle addiction (reactivated), concerts: leonard cohen (#2!), bruce springsteen (#4), tori amos (#5, i believe), regina spektor.

here are some pictures (moving; croatia with the boy group; hiking in carinthia; h&m with aunt resi (100); leonard cohen & band; succulent; michi & alex with heinrich; michi with livia; ladybird):

song of the day: haiti by the arcade fire.

since i last blogged ...

2009-03-26T19:57:00.017+01:00

... i saw my canadian friend colleen again - 11 years after we'd first met in new zealand ...

... and heinz & i paid a visit to ms horowitz who's growing fast and is no longer toothless.

... winter still has not quite gone ...

... although spring made an appearance in styria in mid-march.

... i said goodbye to my lovely english II class ...

... and i've been translating like crazy.

... i've had a poem published in ether magazine ...

... and fish have come and gone at naschmarkt.

... i've kissed heinz once or twice ...

... and have started to pack, because i am moving in with heinz, hoping to be all done by the end of april!

song of the day: la celestina by lhasa.

flued to my bed for a week

2009-01-27T18:18:00.006+01:00

so the flu laid me low for a while - fever peaked at 39.5C (102F) tuesday night. so much for spending my last week off filing, preparing, cleaning, and socialising! the only one i socialised with, besides my hot water bottle sheep, was my fabulous nurse heinz, though i am sure he has seen me more entertaining than last week. i certainly hope so. *suddenly worried*

of course i could not go to the badeschiff for the obama inauguration party, but i was told that a hundred people asked for me (harold might have been exaggerating just a tad), and that it was a great night.

as soon as i was up to it, i started watching lots of the australian open, and i have seen some terrific matches, both women's and men's. i've been reading more neil gaiman (coraline, stardust) and david foster wallace. i have not written any new poetry, and photography was not quite as intriguing between the sweaty sheets as elsewhere.

it's back to work tomorrow - finally. nathan and hanna subbed for me yesterday and today respectively, and apparently i have a really nice group. i look forward to meeting them.

i've acquired tickets for two events later this year: accordion tribe @ konzerthaus in april, and bruce springsteen @ ernst happel stadium in july - i'll see the boss for the 4th time then!

and here's vienna's strongest baby girl - livia malina horowitz, second to none (except perhaps pippi longstocking):

song of the day: don't think twice it's alright by indigo girls & joan baez.

5 months and an invitation

2009-01-13T10:35:00.004+01:00

fifth monthiversary with my lovely man today - yay! :)

and here's an invitation for those in and around vienna -
obama inauguration party @ badeschiff, vienna.
tuesday 20 january, 9.30 pm.

song of the day: changes by butterfly boucher feat. david bowie.

poetry reviews and hello 2009

2009-01-11T19:07:00.007+01:00

it was lovely to see that even though i had been so silent, i still have some blog readers - thanks for your notes, everyone! :)

heinz, being a true sportsman, did the run around the ring on 31 december - about 5 km, and he was quite happy with the time. i was *not* there to do the cheerleader thing ... ;)

back home after the run

so, 2009. heinz and i had a cosy new year's eve at home - cooking dinner, eating, watching some tv, drinking homemade punsch, cuddling up on the sofa, dinner for one on tv, a waltz & champagne at midnight, watching the fireworks all around ... and on the 1st we got up to watch the traditional new year's concert by the vienna philharmonic orchestra, this year conducted by daniel barenboim.

first h&m pic 2009

it hasn't been as cold in vienna as in many other parts of europe, and we have not had much snow either - but i don't miss snow in the city. late one night (around 01.30 am) we went for a walk in the freshly fallen snow - a bit crazy, yes, but fun. :)

people with hats on

lights in the park

houses shrink in the cold

where is receiver?

today we walked around the prater (an old amusement park in vienna), in about 2 cm of snow, and it got quite chilly after a while, but not too chilly to take lots of pictures - i have not edited them yet, but will soon.

unfortunately my english classes won't start until 26 january, but maybe i can start working on an additional project before then. we'll see. while i don't mind the free time, i DO mind not getting paid.

as promised, christopher george reviewed my chapbook the secret meanings of greek letters and alex stolis's and my collaboration chapbook small confessions and pebbles of regret for the winter issue of the loch raven review. thanks to chris for taking the time to read and review - i am quite chuffed.

ps: lots of christmas pics on flickr!

song of the day: all this time by maria mena.

a sign of life at the end of another year

2008-12-31T11:33:00.008+01:00

yes i am still alive. yes i am doing really well. and yes i know i have not blogged in ages.

i never blogged about yet another brilliant kaizers orchestra concert in mid-november.

i never blogged about saying goodbye to my wonderful and very talkative english group in november - they said farewell with a small live fir tree after i had mentioned that i had never had a live christmas tree here in vienna. i named him norbert fichte (fichte=fir), and he is now in carinthia at my parents', awaiting spring, and a nice warm spot in the garden.

me and part of my english group: susanne, gabriele, bettina, lisa, sabine, sabrina

i never blogged about my 37th birthday on 21 november which i celebrated with some of my lovely friends - eating, drinking, dancing, laughing.

heinz loves curves. that, apparently, makes daniela happy.

tango! gudrun and heinz

old friends: gudrun & michi

i never blogged about translating a syllabus (german - english) in december, which was quite a bit of work.

i never blogged about how things are going health-wise: apart from a cold and a couple of days of feeling nauseous i've been fine. i am still on medication for panic attacks and such, but i have not had any attacks in a long time. i will have to go and see the doctor in january and then we can reduce the dosage.

i never blogged about how things are going with the new man in my life: great. really, really great. we are both happy, we have a lot of fun, we talk a lot, and we enjoy getting to know each other better every day. we practically live together by now, it's just that we have two homes - his apartment and mine.

carinthia *hearts* styria

styria *hearts* carinthia

we spent the christmas holidays together, first a few days with my family in spittal, and then with heinz's folks in southern styria. everything went very well. my parents seem to really like him, and i guess they can see that we are happy together. heinz's niece nina (8) apparently likes me quite a bit, and i loved how uncomplicated everything was at his sister christa's place.

spittal city choir: martin gabriel, wilfried gabriel, heinz sorgner

my granny and susanne, who helps to care for her

mom & ärik the älg (my christmas present from heinz)

meeee

i've been out taking photos now and then, but the poetry muse seems to have deserted me. i miss writing, i dream about writing poems, but i just can't sit down and write. sigh. let's hope 2009 will be more inspiring as far as poetry is concerned.

so - 2008. 2008 was ...

tough at first ~ sadness ~ leonard cohen ~ meeting valerio ~ literature festival fun ~ heartache ~ going out ~ saying goodbye ~ working hard ~ no poetry ~ scrabulously active ~ new friends ~ special guest at open mic ~ setting my hopes on the wrong guy for a while ~ erotic poetry reading ~ laughter ~ continuing to work on myself ~ a much, much happier me than in a long time ~ meeting heinz ~ parties ~ translating a book ~ fun with gudrun's boys ~ learning to look back without anger ~ kaizers orchestra ~ cosy evenings ~ music ~ sex ~ vogerlsalat mit speck und kernöl ~ lovely english students ~ cuddling ~ growing my hair ~ hiking in the carinthian mountains ~ challenging students in the q4u project ~ first tattoo ~ small successes ~ photograpy ~ kissing ~ champagne in the city ~ sudoku ~ hot ~ sunsets ~ central cemetery ~ fun ~ lonely at times ~ new chapters ~ cocktails ~ men ~ sweet ~ flirtatious ~ exciting ~ sleepless ~ ice-cream ~ getting on better with my mom ~ great feedback ~ skirts ~ high heeled sandals ~ facebook ~ losing touch a little with some old friends ~ giggling ~ getting tipsy with gudrun ~ new colleagues ~ chewing gum ~ dark chocolate with chili ~ strappy tops ~ crying ~ silliness ~ DIS (sorry, guys, secret!) ~ not enough blogging ~ reading with john siddique ~ reunion with lotta and janne ~ mauthausen ~ pigtails ~ smiles ~ love ~ tea ~ reading ~ espanol ~ carinthia ~ future ~ styria ~ wonderful friends ~ and of course a lot more.

i wish you all a very happy 2009 - may it be full of joy, fun, challenges, success, friendly faces and lots and lots of laughter.

song of the day: this is the life by amy macdonald.

old news, new news

2008-11-08T17:39:00.010+01:00

if only there were about 35 hours in a day, i might actually get around to blogging more regularly! or maybe my life is simply too exciting ... ;)

on 15 october, the poet arrived in vienna: john siddique, that is, wonderful british writer (if you still haven't done so, check him out. now.) and lovely friend. he stayed at casa gabriel this time, so we had time to catch up and talk about life in general and love in particular.

iron man: the poet when he's at home

on thursday, 16 october, we read at shakespeare & company, a great little bookshop in vienna's first district. we had hoped for a few more people, but i guess the heavy rain that set in about an hour before the reading kept some folks away, and even i alone knew of ten people who'd wanted to come but couldn't make it that night. it was nice to see both friends and new faces. i read for about half an hour - poems from all chapbooks and some that are not available in print (yet), and john was on after me. his new poem "the knife" really got to the people. great writing. feedback was definitely good, and i think we both did a great job. so funny that a mere two years ago i was completely new to this whole reading-in-public business! who'd have thought i'd be enjoying it so much?

being the darling that he is, john agreed to come to class with me on friday morning, even though we could not offer him any money for that. i had prepared my group for his visit and they'd written response poems to his "yes" the previous day. john worked and talked with the students for a couple of hours and both sides obviously had a good time.

poeting in class

after a mexican dinner saturday night and shopping for austrian chocolates (i am not sure there are still any left at the shops), john left around noon on sunday.

having gotten over one cold, i immediately caught another, and then had a fever as well, so i stayed home from work for three days. ugh. it was good to be looked after by someone nice, but on the whole i prefer not to be sick. ;)

on 25 october i participated in vienna's photo marathon for the first time. 12 hours, 24 themes, one photo per theme, all in the correct order too. it's about creativity rather than the perfect photo, and a declaration of love to the beautiful city we live in. shame that it was the only day far and wide that the sun didn't even peep out. here are a few of the themes: 100% vienna, st stephen's cathedral, up and away, taxi!, everything's spinning, viennese hospitality. i was out and about from 09.30 until about 7.30 - lots of fresh air! i was really tired that evening, and sick again the next day. :(

spinning

unfortunately i missed several films i wanted to see at the viennale film festival this year due to the colds and fever, but i did see a billy wilder film and a documentary about bob dylan.

it was heinz's birthday yesterday - he's the other scorpio in this relationship - and will now be three years older than me for exactly two weeks. ;) apart from that, it was also the first anniversary of my divorce. what a state i was in a year ago, and how different everything is now! i am actually very, very pleased at how far i have come.

work is going well, only one week left now with my advanced group - i'll miss them. i've had more job offers but since cloning still has not advanced that far and a girl cannot be in two places at the same time, i had to turn them down, at least for now.

the last few weeks have been lovely - perfect autumn weather, my favourite time of year. early november, and the temperatures still reach 15°C (60F)! it's raining today, but that is alright after days and days of sunshine.

i still have not been to have a haircut - it's been nearly six months! i can actually make pigtailettes (*s*) now for the first time in years!

still no poetry. sigh. i wonder when it's time to give up?

oh and yes, like so many others i am very relieved that obama will be the next president of the united states. however, i hope that people don't forget that he, too, is only human, it seems that some consider him a new messiah. but there will be no miracles. still, it is a very good sign indeed. and re: that palin woman - good riddance. she really gave me the creeps.

song of the day: hotel california by the eagles.

words, colours, feelings & other stuff

2008-10-14T19:27:00.008+02:00

apart from that fantastic leonard cohen concert, life has not been tooooo bad either. *g*

i was rather spontaneously invited to read as special guest at the first café kafka open mic after the summer break - and of course i didn't decline. the atmosphere was great, i was quite relaxed, apart from the little bit of nerves that are part of it all. i read for about 25 minutes, poems from my chapbooks and others, and i was happy with my performance. i feel so at home there that it's almost like being in my own flat. and reading without the mic is so liberating and great that i am wondering why i never tried it before that technical breakdown a few months ago.

me at café kafka after my reading

october has been beautiful lately, blue skies and ahhhh the light! so, so amazing, and it's no wonder that this is my favourite time of the year. i was out taking pictures several times over the last couple of weeks, but i have had no time to edit anything.

busy bright bluish beetle

fragile: blossoms, leaf, snail @ donaupark

work is going well. my english class is great, they are so talkative, which makes speaking activities real fun. i can't believe that this is already week 4! i've had a few job offers, but i have to decline just about everything these days.

one other thing that is still fairly new is that i am now an ex-single, and have been for some weeks. the man in question is not a poet, he is not a native speaker of english, and he is not the dangerous heartbreaking kind that this girl has fallen for time and again. meet heinz:

h&m

mirror, mirror

three guys and barbapapa (on tv, not in the picture! *g*): jakob, simon, heinz

tomorrow, my poet friend john siddique arrives around lunchtime, and i am sooooo looking forward to seeing him, and to wour reading on thursday. now if only my temperature went down, and i could breathe through my nose, and my voice were back ... *s*

if you happen to be in vienna on thursday, 16 october, drop in at shakespeare & company bookshop, sterngasse 2, 1010 vienna, from 7.30 pm.

song of the day: los peces by lhasa .

tower of song

2008-10-14T17:59:00.008+02:00

i know it has been ages, but life seems to get in the way sometimes ... still - even if it has been a while, i do want to say a few things about the leonard cohen concert on 24 september, and i do want to say more than just "wow".

like one of my friends said, it is quite impossible to count highlights at a leonard cohen concert - the whole event IS a highlight. and the whole event lasted about three hours. the concert began with dance me to the end of love, and right from the start it was one great song after another. it was almost as if he had seen my secret wish list and granted me more than just one of them. here's the set list:

First set
1. Dance me to the end of love
2. The Future
3. Ain't no cure for love
4. Bird on the wire
5. Everybody knows
6. In my secret life
7. Who by fire
8. Hey, that's no way to say good bye
9. Anthem

Second set
10. Tower of song
11. Suzanne
12. Gypsy wife
13. Boogie Street
14. Hallelujah
15. Democracy
16. I'm your man
17. Take this waltz

Encores
18. So long, Marianne
19. First we take Manhattan

20. Sisters of mercy
21. If it be your will
22. Closing time

23. I tried to leave you
24. Whither thou goest

of course, take this waltz is special for us here, because of the references to vienna. hallelujah is - and most likely will always be - one of my favourite songs of all time. i was particularly happy to hear who by fire and sisters of mercy as well as tower of song. one of *the* goosebump moments was when cohen quoted the first few lines of if it be your will before the webb sisters took over: wonderful, almost haunting version of a terrific song, and it really became clear that the song is indeed a prayer. (follow this link for a video of the song recorded at the toronto concert)

cohen's musicians and background singers were incredible - as if they had become musicians for these moments on stage with cohen. the three ladies supported cohen beautifully, their voices a perfect match for his. what really impressed me was cohen's obvious respect for his musicians and singers, and i don't think it was just show. i am sure a man like him understands the importance of a good band. and there was also respect for the audience. after all - without fans, where would artists be?

one thing i noticed was that some of his songs, while they were great when he wrote them years ago, seem somehow more meaningful now. it's as if a younger cohen had written them for the older cohen he is now, as if he'd grown into them. i also think that a little ironic smile on the side doesn't hurt them either, and that is something that comes with age, i assume. a bit of distance.

my favourite quote of the evening: cohen was saying that he had not been on stage in about 15 years and joked "back then, i was just a kid with a crazy dream". but of course, he also showed us the secret, the key to everything that life is about, and it can be found in his tower of song; it is not what he is saying, it is what the background voices repeat, time and time again. doo-dum-dum-dum de-doo-dum-dum.

i did take photos, but the light was not very good, and i was too far away from the stage. still - here are a couple:

my brother martin and me before the concert

the venue: wiener konzerthaus

leonard cohen & band

mr leonard cohen

mr cohen kneeling

song of the day: if it be your will by leonard cohen / the webb sisters.

lunch

2008-09-18T18:41:00.003+02:00

a murder, motivated by hunger, witnessed today around lunchtime in vienna's 2nd district (click to enlarge):

misumena vatia

song of the day: little yellow spider by devendra banhart.

time-out

2008-09-14T13:36:00.006+02:00

no, the carinthian mountain spirits have not whisked me away, nor have i emigrated to some lonely hut high up in the alps, but i did stay with my family longer than i had planned, from monday till sunday last week. the weather was wonderful, and i was actually able to relax and leave work behind me for most of the days, although i did sit down to translate a little every night.

on our balcony

on tuesday we did a rather short hike from weissensee's eastern end. that lake is just soooo beautiful, no matter how many times i have seen it, i am still in love with it. sad news: a 68 year old german fell down a 50m drop and hit a rock with his head. passengers on a passing boat saw the accident and came to the rescue together with a local fisherman. they reanimated the german and took him to the nearest pier where a helicopter picked him up a while later. he died in hospital two days later though. and here is the spooky thing - i am pretty sure i have a picture of the guy. the description fits, and the picture was taken before the steepest part about ten minutes before the accident ...

here grow cows

on wednesday, we drove to kölnbreinsperre (a dam) and from there hiked along the reservoir to osnabrücker hütte, another easy tour. it was gorgeous. the marmots were noisy, and we even saw a few, already fattened up pretty well for winter. it was rather hot, and on the way back my mom and i bathed our tired feet in icy water (and i mean icy, not just cold) - aaaah!

since my mom had to work on thursday, my dad and i went off alone, taking the chairlift to blutige alm (innerkrems). it was incredibly windy on the lift, but it got quite warm on our way to the little lakes called anderleseen, though it looked rather dark in the direction we took. once we were at the lakes, the wind really picked up and it got so cold that my hands were freezing.

baby donkey (1 month old) at blutige alm

not very nice conditions for a cosy picnic, so we did not stop for long and walked down to willihütte where it was calm and actually quite hot. ah, bliss! sitting in the sunshine, quiet all around, only bees buzzing and birds singing ...

lunch break for butterflies

my mom also works fridays, so it was a father & daughter tour again that day: from thomannbaueralm (innernöring) we reached our first peak of the day: rabenkofel.

it was lovely and warm, but the higher we got, the windier it was, and by the time we reached the second peak, stileck, the wind was almost as strong as the previous day and it was way too cold and windy to sit down and eat up there. we found a sheltered spot a little further down on the way to langnock and rested for a while. langnock was the third peak and from there it was all downhill - though only as far as our path was concerned; the sun was out again, and it wasn't as windy anymore. the cows eyed us suspiciously, the butterflies danced and the bees buzzed, the ants kept themselves busy and the birds chirped happily. dad and i took a lot of photos on the way to lamprechthütte, where we had some of their delicious reindling (a traditional carinthian cake)

healthy carinthian meal

and talked to the owners for a while before our last half hour walk back to the car.

hungry pig munching on my dad's apple & frothing at the mouth

rude austrian cow

saturday was my lazy day - chatting with my brother and my granny, enjoying the sunshine, and just a small dose of work.

for more pics, see my flickr album.

back in vienna, i went back to my job-coaching classes in the afternoons, things are very quiet there. i was relieved to hear that it was okay for me to teach the most advanced english class starting on the 22nd instead of the beginners class starting on the 15th, because it gives me more time for the translation. speaking of which - we still have not received the electronic file, but i am nearly done with the translation of the text (only 10 pages to go now, then the footnotes for which the electronic file would be very handy) anyway!

autumn has arrived: it was hot until thursday, a little cooler on friday, and yesterday it was obvious that while it might still be warm until well into october, there will be no more heat. the light is getting more beautiful by the day and i look forward to some picture-hunting whenever time permits.

song of the day: water to sky by thea gilmore.

in case anybody's been wondering ...

2008-08-30T22:47:00.004+02:00

... yes, i *am* still alive. just. ;)

i've been "on holidays" (from the teaching jobs) since saturday, but in fact i have been working my a** off translating the armenian massacres in ottoman turkey. ka and i still have not received it as a word document, so we cannot use the computer aided translation tool, which makes it all a little more difficult. but i have done over 60 pages now, and i am pleased. i work best at night, so there have been a few late ones ...

i manage to still have a little bit of a life in between though: i saw gudrun and the kids, i met my new italian friend luca and his lovely bike aloisia twice, and i had a lovely evening at nathan & ka's with ronnie and erin and nathan's dad. there are of course pictures, but ... no time for editing and all that. and sometimes a girl needs to have fun, too. ;)

today i was at a heurigen just outside vienna for poetry and music, many of the usual suspects were there. i read four poems, two of them accompanied by martin schönlieb (flute, guitar).

green, with a touch of autumn

the secret meanings of wood

nathan, sort of.

while it's been hot again lately, there is more than just a hint of autumn in the air in the mornings and at night. i made myself a little sunny office in my livingroom so that i'd get some sunshine while slaving away:

my sunny workplace

monday morning i'm off to carinthia to see my parents for a few days. i hope the weather is okay, i really need fresh air and space and nature, though i doubt i'll be able to relax, what with work work work at the back of my mind ...

song of the day: sweet darling by she & him.

powderfinger & other things

2008-08-21T18:36:00.005+02:00

and there i was thinking that august would be relatively quiet. well. turns out i was wrong. georg, our project co-ordinator, has been on holidas these three weeks, and i had to take on some of his responsibilities, which kept me particularly busy the last three days. lots of administration stuff. not really very exciting.

ka and i still haven't got the electronic version of the book we are translating, which is NOT good, because we want to use a CAT tool (computer aided translation). september will be crazy busy.

i also taught two english classes this week, one called "laughter is the best medicine", the other about new zealand. the students seemed to enjoy it, and that's good. :)

last thursday i was at a nice little gig by steve gander & the dangers of ...at shakti here in vienna. it was a fun night with good music and a lot of laughter. i took photos but have not edited them yet. too much other stuff to do.

on sunday i went to the lovely days festival in wiesen (burgenland) for the first time, thanks to a friend of mine. it was the perfect day for it - sunny and warm, but not unbearably hot, no rain. we missed most of hans theessink's performance, which was a shame, but we didn't think they would actually start that early. i was rather disappointed by adam green's performance. i'd seen him three times before, and the other concerts were most definitely better, the first one i saw the best of all. or maybe it just didn't work as well in that setting. wishbone ash and the waterboys were okay, but if i'd had any say in it, i would have put hans theessink on just before the main act, neil young.

and neil young was fantastic. it was the first time for me, and i was - and am - impressed. the man can play! and it is always a joy to watch musicians who are obviously having fun. he sang older and newer stuff, even heart of gold, my my hey hey, helpless and a favourite of mine, powderfinger. if you have a chance to see him, do.

song of the day: powderfinger by neil young.

weird wedding

2008-08-13T19:36:00.006+02:00

i have finally edited the pictures of the copulate and populate video shoot with steve gander and the dangers of ..., and uploaded "some" of the pics to my flickr site. here are a few shots to give you and idea of what was happening at the weirdest and most colourful "wedding" i have ever been to - and to make you want to see more.

"the real messiah" - aka "father steve" - aka steve gander

the groom

the bride

smoking with both hands

copulate + populate

a new (miss) hamlet? "to copulate or not to copulate ..."

shake it, baby, shake it!

song of the day: jokerman by bob dylan.

it's monday ...

2008-08-11T15:14:00.006+02:00

and i overslept. and was out the door within 15 minutes, because for once my hair did not stick up in all directions. boring admin stuff most of the morning. yawwwwwn.

met my friend birgit for much-needed girl talk and just-as-much-needed ice cream. :)
yesterday, much-needed and long-awaited girl talk with my friend sabine. exchanging dating stories is actually quite fun.

men are weird. unreliable, too. cowards. and did i mention, weird? yes. well. but someone told me yesterday that he's been stood up by girls a few times lately, so it must be the fashion.

this - the sun, the moon - was something i enjoyed in the company of a reliable and just-the-right-kind-of-weird man last wednesday (click to enlarge):

no poetry. but one acceptance from a zine i had long given up on.

and hey, the sun is shining, and my hair is newly hennaed.

song of the day: wildwood flower by emmylou harris & iris dement.

happy things:

2008-08-05T21:21:00.003+02:00

fun video shoot for steve gander's song copulate and populate on sunday afternoon - the weirdest "wedding" with the craziest guests ever. tons of photos (i was the "official" photographer! bliss!!), will post a link when they are online.

lovely to catch up with nathan and ronnie and harold on sunday during and after "work".

i talked john siddique, poet and friend, into coming to vienna in october (not that this was a difficult thing to do), and we are doing a reading together! yay!

yesterday evening i had a very good phone conversation with someone i quite like, who was not doing too great, and he told me today that he was feeling better because of me. now if that isn't lovely feedback ... :)

i had a very pleasant late afternoon/early evening: at shakespeare & co, a wonderful little bookshop in vienna's first district, i spoke to gerti (who runs it with her children) about having our reading there, and she was all for it. we had an interesting and really lovely - and rather long - talk, and after she'd heard what i do for work, she said "okay, i have to ask you straight away ..." and she told me about a street fest in the neighbourhood of the bookshop, which is the oldest part of vienna, dating back to the times of the romans. it will be held on 13 september, and she asked me whether i was interested in doing some sort of poetry "workshop" or project there, and so i told her about some ideas and experiments i do with my english classes, and she was totally happy and excited. so. i will be there on 13 september. :) we started talking about leonard cohen, i mentioned i had a ticket, she said she didn't, and i asked if she wanted my brother's spare one. she thought i was kidding. so - she is buying the ticket, or rather, her children will, for her birthday. very successful and productive meeting, don't you think? when i wanted to buy an alice in wonderland notebook, she gave it to me as a present, and i left her a copy of the secret meanings of greek letters.

i bought a book called must try harder - the very best howlers by schoolchildren (which i can use in english classes), and here is my quote of the day:

Poetry is when every line starts with a capital letter and doesn't reach the right side of the page.

oh, happy birthday to rachel! rock on, girl!

song of the day: that's not my name by the ting tings.

sunday morning visitor

2008-08-03T10:15:00.008+02:00

waking up at 06.30 on a sunday is not my idea of fun. especially not when i went to bed at 02.30. but. had i not woken at that time, i would not have made breakfast when i did. and it was just when i had poured my chocolate flakes into a bowl that i met ... max. gave me a bit of a fright when i saw a rather big something moving out of the corner of my eye. but when i saw it was not a giant spider, nothing stood in the way of a friendship for life. or at least the next half hour. so.

meet max:

on board a sheet of paper, i transported max to my livingroom's windowsill. she (pretty sure it was a she, now that i have googled tettigoniae) had one of her many breakfast stops,

then went across the bridge ...

... and stopped, apparently not quite sure what next.

after a stopover on my window, max climbed back across a couple of flowerpots and - took a crap:

at least she had the decency to look sheepish!

then, max jumped onto one of my shelves and met tommy (this is the cd cover of tommy by the who) ...

... did her morning toilette ...

... and successfully escaped me for quite a while, exploring my shelves.

here's max on top of the world,

playing peekaboo,

but then she got ready for takeoff. here is one last picture of her on her launch pad, before she flew off into the tree in front of my window.

i would like to thank max for being such a patient model - i took about 130 photos, and not one complaint (unless that crapping onto my windowsill should have told me something?)! unfortunately, max did not give a permanent address, so i cannot put you in touch. but maybe she'll come and visit you too.

and for those who are wondering what exactly max was ... i am not 100% sure, but she most closely resembled the tettigonia viridissima or great green bush-cricket (grünes heupferd in german). but if anybody knows better, please feel free to leave a comment!

song of the day: max by paolo conte.

nice people and not so nice people

2008-08-03T00:22:00.004+02:00

yesterday was my last day with the english II class - another eight weeks over in what seemed like the blink of an eye! my students gave me a mandarin tree, now called amy, and a couple of frogs (not real!) that i can try to throw at the wall if i feel like it: ferdinand and floggy. and chocolate and candles. :) we threw a farewell party on the last day, of course. ;)

i have recovered from being ill, and the weather is now back to summer, very hot, too hot to be working in stuffy rooms or spending more than three minutes on the u1 underground trains. thursday evening i honestly thought i'd pass out in there. ugh.

but what other way to get to my date? and that thursday evening was most definitely worth it. a perfect summer evening on a terrace, stars out, and late at night a bit of mist hovering just above the ground on neighbouring fields ... a candle, a couple of drinks, pistachios and chocolate, good music ... relaxed conversation, laughter ... and the rest, my dear readers, will not be disclosed (no, not even for the sake of science, valerio! *g*).

but ... tonight this girl here is not quite so thrilled and wondering where exactly it says "please piss me off!" or "show me how much of an asshole you can be!" - or is standing women up and generally behaving like complete bastards the latest fashion among men?? in this particular case, maybe i should have seen it coming. maybe so. but that does not make it right. by the time it became obvious that the man in question had better things to do than stick to his promise, it was too late for anything else, so i spent the evening at home, working, and chatting. sometimes i really am beginning to think i should give up on men altogether.

no new poetry. but i now have copies of alex stolis's and my chapbook signed by us both, so if you fancy a chapswap or would like to buy one of these (rare) copies, get in touch!

we've received our copies of the book about the armenian massacres in turkey, so i have started reading and taking notes, and we will decide soon which parts will be translated by ka and by me respectively.

i am re-reading cecilia woloch's late, and some of the poems choke me up no matter how often i read them. such great work. and i still have tons of (chap)books piled up that i hope to get around to reading soon: latest additions are ivy alvarez's mortal and sam byfield's from the middle kingdom.

off to bed now, i am an official photographer at steve gander's videoshoot for copulate and populate tomorrow (today, really)!

oh, and: me!

song of the day: salsa caliente by marisa monte & cesaria evora.

guys (yet again) & poems

2008-07-27T16:12:00.003+02:00

okay, so there *are* still some nice guys out there, it seems. met one of them just now. and one of the "bad" guys has apologized in the meantime. so. i am inclined to believe in man-kind again. at least a little. ;)

yesterday i finished a poem i had begun in april, and i revised another one. they seem finished to me, although after all these months of not writing, i am a bit uncertain. but i am thrilled that i managed to write a few lines and not be utterly unhappy with them. here are a few lines from [metamorphosis]:

2 a.m. and the night is still digging
in its pockets for a slice of moon

clouds shift uneasily, as if for a moment
all the world unfolded their hands

someone learns that a hair on a blue pillow
can trigger a silence in the trees

[...]

have not been feeling too great the last few days, i suppose that's not such a big surprise after the cold and rainy spell we had. today i went for a walk though, at the new jewish section of central cemetery. i saw two deer - yes, in broad daylight, and not too far from the entrance!

still excited about leonard cohen - my brother martin will come to vienna for the occasion, too, yay! :)

song of the day: ever fallen in love by thea gilmore.

yes yes yes!

2008-07-21T21:03:00.002+02:00

i had given up on this dream of mine coming true - but:

I JUST BOUGHT A TICKET FOR THE LEONARD COHEN CONCERT IN SEPTEMBER!

i am sooo thrilled!!

so, after all, "there's a concert hall in vienna ..." and his mouth might just get a thousand reviews.

song of the day: take this waltz by leonard cohen.

guys, again

2008-07-16T23:46:00.003+02:00

do NOT mention them to me today. it's for your own safety. what have they done? well ...

a) cheating, and a call from an upset girlfriend
b) standing me up
c) not reacting to anything i told him, making me feel like an idiot

... can anybody blame me for my facebook status: "i may be the biggest female fool in the world, but at least i'm not a man"?

song of the day: you suck by the murmurs.

guys

2008-07-15T22:03:00.003+02:00

date on saturday (central cemetery, ice cream, park). different date on sunday (spontaneous, champagne in front of a fountain on graben with piano music nearby, dinner, red wine, late night). no date on monday. confession of beingsomewhatinlovewithsomeone on tuesday. about to hide in a cave for the next, um, 42 years or so, starting now.

song of the day: a fool such as i by elvis presley.

things have changed ...

2008-07-11T22:16:00.006+02:00

once again. i handed in my latest translation on wednesday, thinking that was that for the next few months, looking forward to working only afternoons in august and taking half of september off. but. then nathan told me about this book translation project that his wife had been offered and which she cannot do alone, because it is too much. and they were wondering whether i was interested in taking on half of the 600 pages ... the topic is not particularly fun, nothing light for the summer: the armenian massacres in ottoman turkey by guenter lewy. and the deadline is late september ... i must be mad. :)

* * * * *
yesterday evening i met up with harold, bruno, alina and some of her friends at museumsquartier (outdoors) where we saw a terrific performance: the manganiyar seduction, musicians from rajasthan who perform ballads about kings, sufi poems, and other songs. there were 43 singers and musicians (string instruments, drums, flute, mouth organ ...) seated in cubicles: four rows of nine cubicles, one row stacked upon another, beautiful light effects and fantastic music.

i also enjoyed watching the people, especially children - they were so into it, totally absorbed and fascinated!

* * * * *
no new writing. sigh.

but - some new people, and ... i have a date tomorrow! :)

song of the day: things have changed by bob dylan.

an evening, a night, and a morning

2008-07-06T19:52:00.006+02:00

fortunately i felt relatively fit again on friday, so i was able to go to work, but only for the morning. how nice to hear that my students had missed me! :)

in the afternoon i slept a little in preparation for the all night open mic at café kafka. some of the usual suspects are away at the moment, but others gathered around the tables in hamid's cosy café: peter waugh, steve gander, sylvia petter, evelyn holloway, nathan horowitz, horst prillinger, janus zeitstein, bob hewis, ronnie niedermeyer, harold otto, alina serban. lilly and oxana dropped in for a while, too. it was a bit of a bumpy ride in the beginning, not as smooth as last time, but once we were on our way, it went really well. the special guest was estonian poet triin soomets, she brought poetry in german, english and estonian - what a language! i love that about these kafka nights, that we sometimes get to hear languages you don't normally come into contact with.

triin soomets

i first read two more of my alice poems since people enjoyed those i read last time. and later on, nathan and i read excerpts from small confessions & pebbles of regret, nathan reading three of alex's poems while i replied with three of mine. it was so quiet during the reading, always a good sign, and the feedback was really good, too. :) much later, i read tomas tranströmer's schubertiana and two poems from my elemental manuscript.

nathan & michi, small confessions & pebbles of regret

some of the stories, poems, performances, songs we heard that night were really good - i loved one of triin's poems about europe, some of nathan's work, particularly enjoyed the first part of sylvia's pippa story, laughed myself silly over nathan's reading of the spontaneous group poem i'd inadvertently started early that evening when i complained about men and nathan wrote downsome of my words. sylvia added to the heat in the café with one of her erotic stories, ronnie shared some lovely - and some weird - work, and i just adore what some people (a guy called mitch, i believe) can do with their voice. sophie and her partner briefly turned into frogs, peter read us very special football results, horst introduced us to a couple of freezing police officers, and evelyn lingered in the fruit & veg section for a while.

around 04.30, i went for a walk around the block, it was getting light, and it was quiet and nice outside. our wonderful host hamid served breakfast to the ones who'd made it through the night: ronnie, nathan, steve, evelyn, peter, janus, and me. sylvia had left only a little earlier.

the breakfast club: peter, janus, evelyn, steve

i don't know about the others, but i say: more all night open mics! :)

more pictures of the event in my flickr album.

instead of going home like a sensible person, i walked down to naschmarkt, vienna's most famous market, and instead of just having a quick look around, i was there until 08.45, spending money, enjoying the atmosphere, and - of course - taking lots of pictures. i should go there more often, such lovely colours, and such interesting people!

dried fruit & mixed nuts

sneaky monkey

vienna's high-tech gnomes waldemar and willibald

Big Ass Is Watching You

for more pictures, see my flickr album.

song of the day: scorpio rising by the 10,000 maniacs.

this girl has been ...

2008-07-03T18:41:00.006+02:00

poorly, sickly, ill, and therefore at home and mostly in bed since monday afternoon. and no, it hasn't been fun. and the heat outside did not actually help. blah.

so nothing much is new, except that i finished a poem the other day - the first since late september. i am not sure i am happy with it yet, but it is a first tiny little step in the right direction. at the moment, i feel too weak and tired to celebrate this, but i will make up for that. :)

i have completed most of the boooooring translation (if you ever want to know anything about supplier management software, this is who you should turn to!) with the mid-july deadline, hooray!

a few days ago, i tidied up my flickr site - the sets are now neatly arranged in collections. the most recent one is the euro2008 collection, and the vienna collection has been updated.

and it appears i have been hispanified. which means that i am picking up spanish here and there, and that i seem to have gotten over my dislike for the language, and that - who would've thought? - i want to know more. according to one of my "teachers", i don't quite deserve una estrella dorada yet, but at least i am worthy of a tiny little little purple star. (gracias, valerio. not!)

pic of the day:

taken from my living-room window last week

song of the day: quedate luna by devendra banhart.

eviva españa!

2008-06-29T23:56:00.003+02:00

before the fall: german decorations on graben

slightly crazy spanish fan on graben

father and child, fanzone

eviva españa!

song of the day: eviva españa! by the spanish fans.

heat, humidity, thunderstorms

2008-06-26T23:31:00.003+02:00

is what you get in vienna these days. spectacular rainfall and lightning, but it does not actually cool down. work is not much fun in stuffy rooms, commuting is not much fun on hot, stuffy trains.

but some things look nice in the summer:

light&shadow (hofburg)

street-light (minoritenplatz)

song of the day: hon förtjänar hela himlen by lisa ekdahl.

turkey vs germany

2008-06-25T23:46:00.004+02:00

true turkish fan

germania

song of the day: lay all your love on me by abba.

friday night football

2008-06-22T23:36:00.005+02:00

so. what does a girl do on a friday after work? she wanders into the city to see if she can get some nice shots of croatian and turkish fans before the football match. she sits by the fountain on graben, clicking away, dangling her legs, smiling, enjoying the sunshine.

young fan

camouflaged croatian fans?

one of the croatian fans sitting nearby starts talking to her. his friend joins them and the three of them share health food - chocolate and chips.

ivan & jure posing

the girl, not a football fan, is persuaded to accompany the two guys, ivan and jure, to the fanzone. she plans to stay a little while in order to get some good pictures. but - she finds it's actually quite fun, and therefore she stays the 90 minutes. only - it is 0:0 then, so she stays the extra 30 minutes as well. croatia score just about two minutes before the game ends, but the general happiness is cut short only a minute later: 1:1. so, the girl stays to support her newly-found friends to the end, which turns out to be rather sad and disappointing for the croatian fans as turkey makes it to the next round after the penalty shoot-out.

beauty or beast?

ivan almost can't bear to look

is there life in there?

the two guys insist on driving the girl home. she invites them to crash at her place. they have pizza and the girl turns down a rather spontaneous marriage proposal - twice. so ivan is all the more heartbroken. after getting very philosophical, the three people are tired, the guys are asleep within about 7 seconds, while the girl is kept awake by a gigantic turkish party near her house.

in the morning, the guys neatly fold the covers, give the girl a hug and a kiss on the cheek and are off on their way back to croatia.

life is fun. life is weird. going with the flow is really, really worth it sometimes.

prep work, translating and housework on saturday and sunday, also helping a friend with his website. a little sleep, a little time to read and play scrabble and chat with friends. and it's almost monday again.

more pictures of croatia vs turkey, vienna

song of the day: this is the life by amy macdonald.

just a few things ...

2008-06-19T21:24:00.005+02:00

my dad is a darling. he surprised me with a nikon coolpix camera a couple of days ago when it arrived in the mail at 7.10 am! and just because we had talked about cameras a little while ago and i had told him i was considering getting me a small digital camera, because i don't always want to carry the big one around with me! :) i have not had time to play with the camera yet, but maybe on the weekend.

the reprinted copies of small confessions and pebbles of regret have finally arrived - it only took seven weeks for them to get from canada to austria ... *sigh* if you are interested in swapping or buying, let me know.

work's going well - it's just a bit much at the moment.

viennese cave painting :))

modern art

(click to enlarge)

simmering, vienna

song of the day: girls just wanna have fun by cyndi lauper.

it's a hard life for our policemen

2008-06-18T18:16:00.003+02:00

trying to chat up the girls ...

... but the girls are not very interested

(click to enlarge)

euro 2008 - austria vs germany

song of the day: don't stand so close to me by the police.

egyptian football fan

2008-06-17T22:26:00.006+02:00

(click to enlarge)

euro 2008 - austria vs germany

song of the day: walk like an egyptian by the bangles.

tattoo girl

2008-06-16T10:53:00.003+02:00

so this is the work of art on day 16.
(i am talking about the tattoo. i am slightly older.)

(click to enlarge)

song of the day: la confession by lhasa.

website updated

2008-06-08T01:45:00.003+02:00

i have finally updated the news, words, credits, links & me sections of my website - it had been a couple of months (or more). if you decide to visit and have a minute to spare, do leave your traces in the guestbook!

song of the day: la camisa negra by juanes.

the working life and the other life

2008-06-07T22:24:00.007+02:00

my english III class ended on wednesday - my farewell presents from my lovely students were two books, one about alaska (i had mentioned it was my big dream to go there) and a survival handbook (to avoid meeting the same fate as chris mccandless of into the wild), chocolate for comfort and tissues to dry my tears. :)

i had a reunion with some students of the previous english group last weekend - unfortunately some could not make it, and some did not show up, which i found disapppointing. but it was lovely to see those who were there!

more work for me: monday i started working afternoons as well as mornings. what i am doing is new for me. i'm working with under 21's, helping them with job-hunting, preparing them for job interviews, personality development, etc. georg, who is responsible for the english trainings and this q4u project, said i was his first choice for the job, which is nice feedback. :) the good thing is that i will not have to worry about finding work the rest of the year, the down side is the commuting that takes up my one-hour lunch break. it's quite nice that one of my ex-colleagues, heinz, is now working at the same office again, and one of our old colleagues, franz, works downstairs for another company. :) so far, things are going okay, though a couple of the youngsters can be quite a pain in the butt at times. ;)

i also had to turn down two jobs on tuesday - one translation job, and one as a business english trainer. much better than last year when i was so worried about not finding enough work!

* * * * *
me and my tattoo are both fine - it is healing well, and i am very happy with it. i guess i am getting another one done on my birthday, although i actually feel like doing it sooner. but i will have to figure out what and where. maybe alice, the wonderland girl.

* * * * *
i met poet cecilia woloch on thursday, she was reading at shakespeare & co in vienna's first district with my friend hillary keel. i fell in love with cecilia's poetry straight away. check her out on the web!

and yesterday it was kafka time again - open mic sans mic, this time, due to a missing cable. and i swore right after my five minutes that i would not use the mic there ever again - i felt so, hm, i guess, liberated. i have come to really enjoy reading, but i never feel absolutely comfortable with the mic. and yesterday it was almost like trying it out at home! i read two of my alice poems (the first two when you follow the link) and got looooovely feedback from several people.

girl not quite able to pull off the missing-someone-look amidst all the laughter

all in all i thought the quality of the poetry and stories was particulary good last night. hillary keel - yesterday's MC - kicked the reading off, we heard work by jean almeida, sylvia petter, carlota rokita, evelyn holloway, nathan horowitz, der kosmonaut, horst prillinger as well as some first-timers and special guest cecilia woloch. she is quite a lovely person and her poetry really is beautiful. steve gander finished off a sometimes very raunchy evening with his classic song "copulate and populate". yay!

special guest cecilia woloch

kafka laughter: sylvia petter, cecilia woloch, bob hewis, hillary keel

steve gander in action

i went to salz&pfeffer with sandro miori to talk business (website) until about 02.45 and i did not actually get to bed until nearly 5!

bottle shapes

quote of the night: "try to unblur your face! you're moving in six different directions at the same time!" (nathan to me, trying to take a picture entitled "girl missing mexican")

* * * * *
today, the unthinkable happened: i bought a dress. my first in i-don't-know-how-long (except wedding dress and a ball gown). so, unless i take it back to the shop, some of you might actually get to see me in it.

ah yes, and the euro2008 has finally begun. let the next few weeks pass by quickly. please.

song of the day: cut here by the cure.

black ink

2008-05-30T21:55:00.003+02:00

this is now part of me:

my first tattoo. an archimedean spiral. after about 18 years of "i would like a tattoo, but ...", i decided on this design on wednesday and had it done today (at mona lisa studio). and i am very, very happy with it!

song of the day: la frontera by lhasa.

vienna & persepolis

2008-05-25T19:28:00.005+02:00

i. am. back. in. the. game. yay! ;))

lovely evening yesterday. i am keeping mum about my guest (a girl needs her secrets), but this was me (yeah i know, who would have guessed!):

i also made it to the cinema for the first time in ages, thanks to my colleague and friend daniela. she suggested the matinee at votiv kino and i am so glad i came along. if you have not seen persepolis and you have a chance to, don't miss it. it's an animated film based on the graphic novels by marjane satrapi, about a girl growing up in tehran. through her eyes we witness the transformations as the fundamentalists gain power, we mourn her executed family / friends, and with marjane we experience joy, sadness, confusion, loneliness, the feeling of not fitting in. the filmy is lovingly, beautifully made, with funny and heartbreaking details throughout. i loved the parts set in vienna - they really brought some of the locals to life ... especially the weird woman with her dog! :)

lunch, a walk, and lots of girl talk - very nice afternoon.

and this is me right now:

henna girl

song of the day: dance me to the end of love by leonard cohen.

wien

2008-05-24T09:54:00.004+02:00

walking home along prinz-eugen-strasse, photo-hunting at suedbahnhof (southern train station) and the nearby building site early on sunday morning

very quiet prinz-eugen-strasse

too early for trams

against everything!

05:07:29 a.m.

waiting to be taken away

platform 19

more sleepy vienna pictures

second song of the day: cigány himnusz by i-have-no-idea-who-does-this-version.

the end of time

2008-05-24T09:36:00.005+02:00

steve gander's gig "the end of time" @ TIME, 17 may 2008

steve, pre-gig

we are the band!

wherever i [hang] my hat ...

l'accordeoniste

more photos of the end of time

song of the day: get to leave by howe gelb.

sex. music. dance.

2008-05-18T20:58:00.003+02:00

sex - the erotic reading II @ labfactory on friday: i spent half of my afternoon shopping & wondering what clothes to wear, but i did find something. i got nervous, of course, but that is all part of the fun, gives you that extra edge. it was lovely to see quite a few familiar faces: my colleague & friend daniela, nathan, jean, harold, alina, ronnie, one of my students and her friend, oxana (from the lit fest), kirsten (a new addition to the kafka crowd), lilly (from the book presentation 2 weeks ago), and it was cool to finally meet gerald ganglbauer of gangway.net - my first online publisher, over ten years ago. all in all there were about 40 people, not bad.

we kicked off the evening with a poem by felix mendelssohn, threnody - and each of us poets plus musician steve gander read a stanza. and then it was already my turn: i read Meet My Breasts and then Meet Mr Johnson. straight after that, i read a text together with horst prillinger (author) and pete waugh.

the other poets were evelyn holloway, sylvia petter, victoria slavuski, janus zeitstein, hillary keel, homemade gordon banks. i particularly enjoyed hillary's poems and sylvia's very hot vichyssoise short story, and i loved what the musicians - martin schönlieb on guitar and sandro miori on sax/flute/harmonica - did.

the other poems i read were between two sips of soda, after dessert in the bathroom, cabin fever (with music by martin and sandro), another entry in the bedroom book of lies (with martin on guitar), four two-liners (reports), ain't misbehavin' (with martin on guitar).

steve gander played a few songs before and after the interval, and at the end of the programme - a nice little tune called copulate and populate, and he made us poets sing along. :)

i enjoyed it - and i think i did a good job. funny how i have come to really love reading over the past one and a half years!

ronnie took lots of photos with my camera during the reading, and i kept snapping away afterwards. here are a few of those pics, but if you want more - follow the link to flickr.

that's me reading

daniela and michaela, vienna's most wonderful english teachers

mms: martin, michi, sandro

change of perspective: michi, martin, sandro

girlpower! michi, hillary, alina

* * * * *
i had a very slow day yesterday - got a bit of work done, cleaned up a little, and then went out again at night. steve gander & his band played a gig called the end of time, at time, which is closing down very soon. ronnie, peter, harold, evelyn, oxana, bruno and bob were there, and i really enjoyed the music.

funny: when i went to the restroom, a woman was waiting there and she turned around and said "oh, hey! you are the poet!" now you see, this does not happen every day. (not yet. haha.) so i asked her how she knew that. and she replied that she had seen me the previous night. turned out that kat is a friend of oxana's, which of course explained things. :)

bruno persuaded me to go dancing with him and ruth, so off we went to ostklub - where i had never been, but wanted to go. they had live music, and wow, was i glad i decided to join r&b! a spanish band called nomhadas played, and they were fantastic. strange combination of instruments: didjeridu, bass, percussion and sitar (played by their singer, a lovely young woman). very interesting music, so do check it out. very danceable, too. but of course we did not go home when the band stopped playing, we continued to dance until 4.30-ish.

i walked towards südbahnhof (railway station) and took photographs of sleepy vienna along the way (along the belvedere) and at the station. i bought freshly baked white bread with melted cheese and a chocolate croissant ... aaaahhhhh! i got home at 5.45 ... these late nights are becoming a habit! :)

photos of last night and this morning will follow soon.

song of the day: yo las alas by nomhadas.

news

2008-05-15T15:51:00.004+02:00

i'm really sad that my favourite female tennis player, justine henin, has announced her retirement. this really came as a surprise - henin had been ranked number 1 for over a year now, and she's only 25. i will miss her stunning backhand.

oh and just in case you are wondering about what is going on in austria: we do not all keep people locked up in our basements, nor do we normally (plan to) kill our entire families with an axe.

dress rehearsal for erotic reading tonight - we had one on tuesday, which was sooo much fun! i decided to have martin and/or sandro accompany three of my poems on guitar/sax. i really am looking forward to the reading, and i am also getting a bit nervous now ...

song of the day: smokers outside the hospital doors by the editors.

another late poetry night

2008-05-11T20:37:00.003+02:00

i'm really getting good at this ... staying out way later than i intend to, that is. :)

on friday i received an invitation to some sort of "spontaneous open mic" sat evening at a placed called "time". (i like that. "a place called time".) when i got there at 9, peter waugh was there setting things up, and the musicians for the night were there, too: martin schönlieb (guitar), sandro miori (sax, flute), and steve gander (guitar, vocals). the only one i did not know was poet/singer leila thigpen. ronnie showed up, also oxana from the lit fest, harold, a few friends of martin's, and a handful of other kafka people. so, not a big crowd. but it was a lovely evening. i only regretted not bringing more of my poetry, because i was asked to read twice - 3 poems each time, half of them from my first chapbook, and a few erotic poems for practice. peter also asked me to read two sound poems with him and leila. i had never done anything like that before, but it went really well, i think.

i enjoyed the performances, the musicians were excellent. martin and sandro played a few things together, also something with steve, and they accompanied some of the poems, even one of mine! i could not believe that it was 1.15 by the time we finished, time went so quickly!

the oddest thing that happened was when this (drunk) guy at the bar stopped me on my way back from the bathroom to ask about the event, and eventually asked me whether i was a member of "that group, that club or whatever it is". and i explained that we were not a club, but that we met at literary events and read together and such. and then he asked me whether i was their groupie, and which of the guys i sleep with. i was speechless, otherwise i would have said "all of them".

we hung around a while, peter, steve, martin, sandro, christian and i, and then decided to go and eat. good thing there are places like salz & pfeffer where you get really nice food from midnight until 8 am. peter and steve were supposed to join the rest of us but never showed up. anyway, we had a good time, and i did not get home until about 4 am! :)

i look forward to working with martin and sandro at the reading on friday, and listening to more of their music. we are having rehearsals on tuesday and thursday, one with the musicians. it should all be good fun!

* * * * *
now for something completely different: if you have not seen the austrian academy award winning film die fälscher (the counterfeiters) yet, make sure you do. it is really worth seeing. after our recent visit there, it was also interesting that a part of the movie was set at mauthausen concentration camp.

song of the day: quedate luna by devendra banhart.

Älgar i Österrike & adiós a un mexicano

2008-05-08T23:35:00.006+02:00

my wonderful swedish friend lotta and her husband janne came to vienna for a few days on 27 april. we spent what was left of sunday evening together, because janne had to start sampling austrian beers and of course we had some chatting to do.

on monday we got a little sunburnt while having lunch at museumsquartier, and planned our day trip to mauthausen.

tourists in the rain:
lotta, janne, me, valerio

i had long wanted to go to mauthausen to see the former concentration camp where more than 200 000 people from all over europe were imprisoned and about half of them killed. lotta and janne were interested in seeing it, and valerio joined us for the day. janne was our driver, and i his co-driver - and i hardly ever got us lost. *g* the weather was quite horrible - rainy, windy and cold, and in a way that was appropriate.

i still cannot quite find the words to describe what it was like to be there, to walk into the cells, the gas chambers, the crematorium, to stand on the spot where countless people were shot in the neck. everybody went absolutely quiet in there, even the groups of students, and everybody seemed to want to be by themselves. i felt this pressure on my chest - and lotta described it the same way. as if breathing got somehow more difficult. as if it were a little more of an effort. a few months ago i could not have gone there, i would have panicked. even now, feeling so much better and with the medication, i felt a little claustrophobic.

yes, i cried. and i was not the only one. and in such a place, it is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. but of course, even at the actual place where these unspeakable things happened, it still remains a bit unreal. it is impossible to imagine what it must have been like. and the whole thing is so massive, it is certain pictures, details that really hit home. there was one photo in particular that i cannot get out of my head: a dead prisoner hanging upside down in barbed wire, as if caught in a wobbly backflip.

the grey grey grey of the place, the barbed wire, the rusty locks, the dirty windows, wingless flies, trapped spiders - haunting.

gas chamber, mauthausen

wall, mauthausen

lock, crematorium, mauthausen

greyness: mauthausen in the rain

for more pictures, see my mauthausen album at flickr.

* * * * *
wednesday afternoon i took lotta and janne to my beloved central cemetery, where we strolled around in the old jewish section, had a look at the church and visited the graves of famous austrians. then i rushed to the supermarket and home to get everything ready for the party at my place.

and it was a great party, so thanks to lotta, janne, valerio, birgit, babs, andi, tom, ulli, ruth, bruno, ronnie, harold, daniela, tarkin, and hillary for coming along and making the night special and helping me get rid of the beer and wine and food. ;) it was lovely to see how my friends from so many different places (united states, italy, germany, mexico, peru, sweden), who had never met before, chatted away and laughed and danced.

who's the weirdest of them all?
valerio, ronnie, hillary

having fun, are we? lotta, valerio, me

beer addicts bruno, ruth, hillary

for more party pics, follow the link to my flickr party album.

* * * * *
on thursday, i met up with my two swedes after their tour around schönbrunn. we did quite a bit of walking, visited the sphinxes at the belvedere, then had a bottle of wine and pizza at my place, before it was time to say goodbye again, as lotta and janne left on friday, and i had to work. i hope they come back soon! :)

* * * * *
friday evening i went to the kafka, and valerio joined me for the second half of the open mic. i read three of my naughtier poems towards the end. then, one last late-night walk with valerio, and an adiós to el caballero for a lot longer than just a couple of days, as he left for mexico on saturday. i *do* miss the guy.

song of the day: spooky by dusty springfield.

sex - the erotic reading II

2008-05-08T23:29:00.005+02:00

i will be reading alongside peter waugh, evelyn holloway, sylvia petter, vicki slavuski, horst prillinger, homemade gordon banks, hillary keel, janus zeitstein and felix mendelssohn next friday. and yes, it *is* about what you think ... and i have around 10 mins to read my naughtier poems! there will also be music by martin schönlieb, sandro miori and steve gander.

"sex - the erotic reading II"
@ labfactory
praterstrasse 42, 1020 wien
16 may 2008, 20.30

do come (pun possibly intended) and bring your friends!

i have been addicted to my song of the day for a while now:

song of the day: mi vanidad by lhasa.

life still goes on ...

2008-05-04T00:09:00.004+02:00

yes, i am still alive. yes, i have been having a good time. no, i haven't been at home much. yes, that's perfectly alright. and yes, it means i seriously need to get you up-to-date on this blog.

i have spent today translating (websites about animal feed are generally underrated. not. *g*), editing photos, and being a little sad (not too much, caballero, don't worry) because valerio left for mexico today - he's become such a good friend that i know i will miss him a lot.

here is - finally! - a link to the lit fest pictures on flickr. enjoy.

more about the partying, lotta and janne's visit, the day trip to mauthausen concentration camp, and poetry readings - including lots of pictures - some time soon.

for now - a few pics of hillary's party last week can be found on flickr.

and today's song of the day has actually been the soundtrack of the week since tuesday:

song of the day: united states of whatever by liam lynch.

vienna lit fest 2008 - day 3 & after

2008-04-28T06:50:00.007+02:00

so here's day 3: after the late nights, i had a bit of a sleep-in on saturday and so the day kind of started with rommi smith's poetry in performance workshop. it was fantastic. we did some great warming-up exercises: breathing, voice, relaxing our muscles. the tasks that rommi set us were really good. i had been a bit scared that i would not be able to come up with anything, because i have been blocked so long, but i did come up with quite a lot of lines, and i have continued to work on one poem begun at the workshop. at the end, rommi performed one of her poems (the theme was slave trade and abolition thereof) - it actually gave me goosebumps.

rommi smith showing us how to perform poetry

at night, i met up with valerio, and we went to ratpack once more. we missed the discussion lifting the veil, about the relationship of western culture with the islamic world, which i was interested in, but i simply could not make it. we were, however, perfectly on time for charles ofoedu's performance. charles is nigerian but has lived here for a long time now. he did not only read poetry, he also talked a little about his experiences in jail and the deaths of black friends of his who were mistreated by the austrian police.

next up was jackie kay. my poet friend john siddique had told me she was a must-see. and he was right, of course. it felt as if jackie were at home in her lounge room entertaining a bunch of friends. what bonding with the audience! she's so funny as well - and her poetry and prose are wonderful, too. i managed to grab one of the last books available and have it signed. :)

the lovely jackie kay

after this highlight, another one: rommi smith performing poems from her collection mornings and midnights. and i mean performing, not reading. she was supported by kenny higgins on bass, and some of her lines were whispered, others sung ... amazing what she does with her voice. the poems explore the life of a fictitious jazz diva who used to tour with several jazz legends and who has just read about her own death in some paper. rommi really had everyone's attention. wow.

rommi smith, mid-performance

of course we did not go home after the performances, but we talked to jackie and clare and rommi; clare told us some more stories as we were sitting around a table with bruno, ruth, harold, valerio and a few others, sipping beers or cocktails ... it was great, and i was pretty high on all the buzz and fun and lit vibes.

ladies swapping secrets: jackie and clare

bruno and valerio trying to squeeze my brain to a pulp

clare, nicely decorated, with johnny unger, not so nicely decorated, in the background

and it would not have been v & me if we had not walked all the way to karlsplatz afterwards. it was *really* late when i got home!

on sunday, i met up with clare and rommi in the afternoon and we spent a good hour chatting and sitting/walking in the sun. they are two exceptionally lovely women, and a lot of fun.

clare was off on monday morning, but rommi was still in town, and valerio and i went out to a cocktail bar with her, monday night. interesting conversation, laughter, and some poetry talk. very nice. very.

that was the 2008 lit fest. many, many thanks to julia novak and her team once again, for making all that happen. i hope there will be another one soon.

i still have not had time to edit many of the pics, but once i have them on flickr, i will post a link here.

song of the day: linger by the cranberries.

vienna lit fest 2008 - day 2

2008-04-24T06:51:00.004+02:00

no time for anything, so no time for blogging, but here is day 2 of the lit fest:

julia had asked me to pick up british poet rommi smith at one of the train stations and take her to the lunch reception for us vienna lit VIPs. *g* the reception was at josephine's house in the 19th district - very beautiful part of the city. it was lovely to talk with rommi on the way there - about her workshop at a school, about poetry, about life.

at the reception i met clare murphy and joe brennan, two irish storytellers who liz gallagher put me - or rather julia, the director - in touch with. they are such lovely people, and great fun, too. i bumped into nigerian poet charles ofoedu there for the first time in over ten years - he used to be good friends with my friend tom. i met mehru jaffer, gabriele pötscher (who co-wrote two books with an old acquaintance of mine, walter hölbling), bruce holland rogers, our host josephine, and brian patten and sylvia petter were there, too. great food, interesting discussions, a lot of laughter, and some sunshine - not a bad friday afternoon!

clare murphy going all jackie o. and joe brennan pretending not to care

at the reception: sylvia petter, brian patten, gabriele pötscher, brian's partner linda, charles ofoedu, bruce holland rogers

i was at the venue, ratpack, at 6, in time for the school slam. students between 14 and 18 had responded to a poem by jackie kay, and the final 18 presented their work on stage at ratpack and a jury of three women, including jackie kay herself, chose a winner and two runners-up (and, as it were, one HM). you've really got to admire those young people - i don't think i could have read an english poem to an audience of 100+ at that age! i would have been way too nervous, and anyway, what few poems i had written at the time, well, they were not exactly great. :)

school slam winner!

after the slam, bruce holland rogers from the united states read some of his short short stories. i particularly enjoyed one called egypt, which was rather funny.

next up was one of the events i had really been looking forward to: clare murphy and joe brennan, the two irish storytellers. they were fantastic. i don't think there was anyone in the audience who was not spellbound. people were listening and watching open-mouthed.

joe's frog story was great fun, the audience was asked to join in, and i just loved how that seemed to bring out the child in so many! do visit joe's website.

joe brennan in action

i loved the long story that clare told, an irish tale. do go and check clare out on youtube and stop by her myspace site.

clare murphy, storyteller extraordinaire

happy clare and happy joe after their performances

gabriele pötscher (graz-based american) and walter hölbling (graz-based austrian) read from their two collections of poetry, one of which i had read some years ago. i particularly enjoyed gabriele's tongue-in-cheek and sassy poems. it was also great to finally meet walter after so many years of corresponding online.

julia had asked me to read my poem how to survive in vienna, the poem published in the vienna views anthology in 2006, at the open mic. i was the second or third reader at the open mic and read the requested poem as well as a vienna-themed poem from small confessions & pebbles of regret. i got immediate reactions there - people smiling, chuckling, etc - and quite a bit of applause!

i would have stayed longer, but clare and joe asked me to join them for food and drinks, so i left, together with the storytellers, harold, a couple of vienna lit girls and georg in his kilt. we had a great time, and clare seemed to come to life again after having eaten more than two grown men ... *g*

i got home very late, but happy and feeling, well, YAY!! :)

day 3 to follow - pictures ditto.

song of the day: westwards we're headed by lucky jim.

vienna lit fest 2008 - day 1

2008-04-20T13:24:00.006+02:00

i have to do this in instalments or i will never get any work (yeah, that four-letter-word!) done. so here's day 1:

was i nervous? was i? you bet. thanks to valerio for making sure i actually showed up at the venue, vienna's ratpack. *g* and thanks again to my lovely friends who came to ... well, make me even more nervous. ;)

sylvia petter kicked off the lit fest with her short story "Bogey Man" from the collection "Back Burning", which i enjoyed, despite being a little distracted before my own performance. sandra huber was next, reading some of her recent poetry. cool sounds in her lines, and very charming stuttering. :)

vienna voices - sylvia petter, sandra huber, julia novak, me

and then it was my turn. i began with a poem from my manuscript-in(-sort-of)-progress, elemental, oxygen (o) – first kiss, the poem dedicated to sean power who was the first boy to kiss me - properly, that is - and who drowned in 2004. i could sense that the audience went quiet and were really listening, and i felt myself relax halfway through the poem. next was rho from the greek letter series, and it went really well. i followed that up with a poem from small confessions & pebbles of regret, and it was as if the people in the audience were holding their breath at times, it was fantastic! i enjoy reading that poem out loud – and the same can be said for the last one i read, a very personal poem – Open Letter to A Poet. i'd had really good feedback on that one before, and i just had to read it at the festival. i could see on people's faces that i really *had* them, which was, well, *wow*, and then there was so much applause, i was totally overwhelmed and thrilled. :)

me, being a poet in public ;)

after the reading, victoria, one of my vienna-based poetry acquaintances, came up to me and said "you look great, and ... your last two poems ... i was so touched, some of the lines brought tears to my eyes!" i am sure i blushed, though it was probably hard to tell, because my face was all flushed anyway. ;)

then the wonderful rommi smith approached me to say she had just bought both my books and would i sign them for her, and where could she get hold of that last poem ... i was sooooo thrilled! she also mentioned that people had actually gasped and held their breath at the back, in reaction to Open Letter.

i got myself a new fan that evening, too, oxana, who's originally from moscow and who gave me such lovely feedback that i ended up beaming so much they could have switched off the lights! ;) stacy from the vienna review asked me a few questions, random people congratulated me ...

my new fan oxana with her friend

and my friends hugged me and told me they were proud of me, it just made me feel very loved and fuzzy and warm, and later that evening i said to a couple of friends that i was really, really happy. no "but". no "if". just plain happy.

next up was british poet brian patten whose reading i enjoyed a lot. one could see that the man has had a lot of experience performing – he read alongside neruda and ginsberg when he was an up-and-coming poet and worked closely with adrian henri and roger mcgough. i bought one of brian's books and had it signed, of course, poet groupie that i am. *g*

brian patten and julia novak, event manager extraordinaire

brian patten and this weird woman ...

labyrinth poets peter waugh, homemade gordon banks, felix de mendelssohn and toby fischer rounded off the evening with poetry "round the world" – some interesting stuff there, though the poem about the part of austria that i come from was not a compliment ... *s*

of course i did not leave immediately after the reading, there was some poetry talk with several people before valerio and i walked all the way back to karlsplatz, and i caught the last underground train home.

the only problem was – i could not get in my front door. my key would not fit. hm. now – right door. right key. not drunk. okaaaay. deep breath. try again. the key wouldn't go in any further than about a centimetre. my downstairs neighbour joined me, having been on the last train as well. we tried her key. nothing. hm. not good. we tried again and again. so the question was, of course, what do you do when you cannot get into your house at 1 a.m.? there were no lights on in any of the apartments facing the street. so who were we going to wake to get in? i was soooo glad that i was not alone – and so was petra. we were just about to get a little desperate when a light went on on the first floor, so we rang and rang the doorbell, and petra's neighbour opened the door for us. whoever went in last before us, might have left the door open, you know ... that would have been a smart move.

i was too high on good lit fest vibes to go to bed immediately – all the wonderful feedback and the buzz and the other performances and connecting with new people had me up until well past 2.

day 2 and many photos to follow, i have to get some work done now. i am already beginning to panic when i think of what's coming this week ... teaching, translation work, prep work, socialising, doctors' appointments ...

song of the day: this is the life by amy macdonald.

vienna lit festival, part 1

2008-04-18T01:43:00.003+02:00

this is a very short shorty - it is 01.40am and i need to get up in less than five hours (looooong day: teaching, reception for authors, lit fest day 2), but i have to say that the reading went really, really well, and i had such wonderful feedback, i am still high on it about six hours later! and i have to thank my lovely, lovely friends gudrun, birgit, tom, sonja, nathan, and valerio for being there - most of them especially for me. *very touched*

there will be more, there will be pictures. what did frank n furter say in the rocky horror picture show? wait for it. ;)

song of the day: diferente by gotan project.

yeah. well.

2008-04-16T20:53:00.002+02:00

song of the day: breathe by anna nalick.

smiles ...

2008-04-13T10:42:00.005+02:00

... to exorcise the bloody bug:

"groped" - photo by ronnie niedermeyer

"smooched" - photo by ronnie niedermeyer

"blurry michi" - photo by valerio landa

"post-kaizers-euphoria: sabine, michi, valerio" -
photo by valerio landa

song of the day: mann mot mann by kaizers orchestra.

up. down.

2008-04-12T20:27:00.003+02:00

waaaaahhhhh!!! so i am just getting over that nasty cold, right, and what do you think happens? i catch a stomach bug. great. just about perfect. it is not as bad as it could be, but that doesn't make vomiting any more fun. thing is, no matter how blah i feel, i still have to get lots of things done this weekend, and i am very proud to have finished my prep work already.

this clip here cheered me up yesterday, and cheered me up again today. check out demetri martin's website.

song of the day: song of the ghetto by stéphanie valentin.

more fun! more noise! more kaizers! [edited]

2008-04-11T19:44:00.015+02:00

the title of this blog post refers to a blog entry of september 2005 and my first encounter with the marvellous kaizers orchestra - arguably the best live band on the planet. having missed their last concert in vienna, because it was sold out before i realised they'd be playing here, i'd been looking forward to yesterday's concert since i reserved the ticket way back in december. having preached the greatness of the six norwegians, i did not have to go alone: sabine and valerio, both kaizers newbies, came along to arena. just like on the 28 september 2005, i was feeling under the weather - i have had a nasty cold for the past few days. but. miss a kaizers concert? nah. no way. so what if my voice was all but gone around 4 this afternoon. (as long as it's back by thursday, everything's fine. *g*) so what if i went to bed at 01.30, because i was too hyper to sleep. kaizers rock. quite literally, too.

janove aka "the jackal", charismatic frontman and responsible for most of the band's songs, has grown his hair and certainly hasn't lost any of his scandinavian sex-god-liness (see blog post of 09/2005). helge "the omen" kaizer deserves his own fan club for his unique, almost bizarre appearance (tailored suit, moustache, and gas mask) and inimitable way of playing the pump organ (sometimes he reminds me of a half-asleep, moody rowlf - yes, the one from the muppets show). drummer rune "mink" kaizer is a beast; in the best possible sense. øyvind "thunder" kaizer loves his bass, and it loves him back. and the guitarists geir "hellraizer" kaizer and terje "killmaster" kaizer, well, let's just say their nicknames aren't a coincidence. and those guys know how to rock. oh yes. in addition to more traditional instruments, oil barrels and hubcaps cannot be missing on a KO stage - it does get noisy. and that is a good thing. the guys give everything they have - but they get a lot back from their fans.

it's quite fascinating, really: a band sings in norwegian, and maybe a handful of the 1100 people in the audience understand more than a few bits and pieces of the lyrics, but from the moment they appear on stage, janove has everyone wrapped around his little finger. for the band it must be quite amazing to have an austrian audience take over and sing a chorus in norwegian at the top of their lungs (sving din hammer / til din papa drar deg inn / trekk et rom nummer / men ikkje bland din med min - maestro)!

kaizers played songs off their new album as well as many of their classics - maestro, blitzregn baby, kontroll på kontinentet, mann mot mann, delikatessen, ompa til du dør, dieter meyers inst., bøn fra helvete ... but of course KO is not a band to just play their songs, they celebrate their music - and so do their fans. and janove is not one to keep quiet between songs: he talks and asks questions and jokes and fools around. it's pure joy to watch a band have so much fun at work. this is what their fans love them for. and i cannot for the life of me imagine any fan actually going off them again.

the great news is that they announced another appearance in vienna in october or november. and guess who's going?

valerio and sabine totally loved it, too. :)
v was the man with the camera, i hope to have a couple of photos to share some time soon.

i just had to watch the kaizers live dvd today, plus all the bonus material. they're a lovely bunch of guys. may they be around for a long, long time.

and here's some kaizers for you. enjoy.

editing in for a p.s.: geoff berner was the support act - worth checking out. gypsy folksy klezmer punk sort of music from vancouver, canada. ;)

editing in once more: i've sneaked into valerio's facebook photo album and nicked a couple of pictures (which i am sure is perfectly okay if i tell you that they are NOT MINE, they are VALERIO's, and he is not only nice and talented, he also has the most beautiful hair!):

song of the day: maestro by kaizers orchestra.

sandalous girl

2008-04-09T18:02:00.006+02:00

i am getting stranger and stranger by the minute. today i tried on a skirt (no, this is not the strange part), and the shop assistant brought me a pair of strappy sandals with 6 cm (2.4 in) heels just to see what it looked like with "proper" shoes.

me: "nice, but exactly the kind of shoes i absolutely don't wear. can't wear."

her: "why?"

me: "because i can't walk in such shoes. i'd break every possible bone in my feet and legs within five minutes!"

her: "then it's about time you started practising!"

me: "no way!"

fast forward, an hour (and approx. 12 trousers, 2 dresses (!), 3 t-shirts, and 3 skirts) later: michi leaves the shop with a pair of jeans, a skirt, a t-shirt - and the sandals which she has grown rather fond of over the past hour. something odd is going on here. hmmm.

* * * * *
in the mailbox today: patrick carrington's Hard Blessings and suzanne frischkorn's American Flamingo, both in exchange for my secret meanings.

* * * * *
i still have not made the final decisions re what to read at the lit fest - which is in 8 days!! slowly getting a little panicky here. i heard yesterday that there will be a reception for authors reading at the festival, next friday at 1pm. now if only i can get rid of this horrible cold before next thursday ...

the vienna lit fest programme (click to enlarge):

* * * * *
kaizers orchestra concert with sabine and valerio tomorrow! yay!!

song of the day: we had it right by nellie mckay & k d lang.

café kafka

2008-04-06T22:06:00.007+02:00

as promised - pics of the latest open mic at café kafka (friday, 04 april). my new - and very brave - friend valerio decided to come along, and what's even better: he did not regret it afterwards!

i read what is the sound of one hand clapping?, and one of the letters from small confessions & pebbles of regret. cristina, the special guest from mexico, asked me to read the german translations of two poems for her, so there was a first for me - reading in german! we took tons of photos, i loved hillary keel's poem about istanbul, and martin aka homemade gordon banks is just the bestest mc ever. especially in spanish. :)

the reading part was over around 11.45, and then we stayed to chat with some of the regulars, and the newly-weds ruth & bruno dropped in ... and i did not get home until 2 am!

martin, bestest mc in the whole wide ... erm, wien?

blurry but having fun: valerio & i

hillary & harold

happiness has a name: ruth & bruno, the newlyweds

valerio has a laugh

two lovely ladies - ruth & i

more pictures on my flickr page .

song of the day: madagascar by gogol bordello.

what i've been meaning to blog about but never got around to ...

2008-04-05T16:34:00.007+02:00

so much for my time off work: of course, me being me, i had to come down with a bad cold and a fever for a few days. i am sure it had nothing to do with me standing around in the chilly morning air last sunday ... duh. :)

monday: farewell to the loveliest bunch of students ever. i was almost embarrassed by all the wonderful feedback. and one student told me that she was particuarly impressed with me as a person, even more than me as a teacher. does feedback get any better than this? we went for lunch and ice-cream after class. unfortunately, not everyone could come, but ... i am sure they were there in spirit.

apples make a girl happy - nadine

andy and "his" martha

werner, doro, marianne

the wild teacher and the crazy bunch

* * * * *
tuesday, i went to one of my favourite haunts again, the central cemetery. i spent several hours in the new jewish section, where i had never been before, and took lots of photos. later that afternoon, ronnie joined me, and we walked around some other parts of that beautiful place for a while longer. here are some pictures - for more, please visit my flickr page.

* * * * *
wednesday, there were people to see, but i was feeling blah - and when i got home around eight, i knew why: 38C, my thermometer said. so, off to bed, and i guess i sweated most of it out. i was supposed to be working thursday afternoon and evening, but that had to be cancelled. :(

the good thing about thursday was that i received the ten author's copies of small confessions & pebbles of regret, as well as loch raven review 2007, and carolyn guinzio's west pullman.

friday, i felt up to going to the open mic at night, but i will blog more about that later, when i have edited the tons of photos!

another week i did not make it to the movies - but i got to watch into the wild with my students last week, it is fantastic. very beautiful, and my students found it as moving as i did.

song of the day: ask the mountains (extended version) by vangelis & stina nordenstam.

teaching girl & party girl

2008-03-30T20:14:00.008+02:00

i am not looking forward to tomorrow - time to say goodbye to my current students. they gave me some health food (ie chocolates) and lovely flowers on friday, and in return i took photos of them working hard.

andy's notoriously strange dress sense
("i want to be a bunny!")

hard-working students:
andi, nadine, irene (front left) - claudia, werner (front right) - martha, doro (back left) - margaret, robert, mahmoud (back right)

team-working: margaret, mahmoud, robert (aka rüdiger)

of course, on weekends respectable teachers turn into party girls ...

i had sort of accepted the fact that nothing was happening on the weekend, but then my delightfully weird friend ronnie emailed me around six on saturday to ask whether i was "going to ruth & bruno's party at andino" as he and alina (an open mic friend) were going. the obvious question was: "who are ruth and bruno?" turns out they are open mic people, and i never knew their names. to cut a long story - involving several highly philosophical digressions, discovery of ronnie's make-up problems and musings about female suicide bombers' sweet hereafter - short: we got to the party around nine, were surprised it was a wedding party (r&b had gotten married on friday) but were obviously very welcome. everyone was lovely.

we met three very dangerous italians - daniele, paolo and fabrizio, bumped into harold who is also an open-mic-er, were happy to see alina around 10.30, laughed a lot and enjoyed music by goran bregovic and such. ronnie left around midnight, and at about half past midnight, the dancing began. and boy, did we dance! it was absolutely great, and such fun! we were asked to call it a day around five or whatever time it was ... but upstairs they were still playing music, so we hung out there until after six. not that we went home at that point. instead we spent over an hour standing in the chilly morning air under a perfect blue sky, passing a bottle of red wine, eating leftover cake, taking silly photos, listening to music and almost-dancing. the police stopped to tell us not to be too noisy, and we did our best.

isn't it funny how those nights when you don't have any expectations turn out to be the best? i cannot remember the last time i came home from a party at eight in the morning! and i was not even tired until about 40 minutes later as i found myself sitting down for more than ten minutes for the first time in ages.

here are some pics - not great quality, because they were taken with my mobile, but i guess you can see we were enjoying ourselves.

crazy party people: bruno-the-groom, nicolas, paolo, daniele, and me

two very dangerous italian brothers: fabrizio and daniele

bruno & paolo

breakfast!

paolo - a penny for his thoughts ...

song of the day: bella ciao by goran bregovic.

small confessions & pebbles of regret

2008-03-27T23:51:00.005+01:00

jenna, our wonderful rubicon press editor, sent a note last night to tell alex stolis and me that our chapbook small confessions & pebbles of regret is now available! yay! it's taken a while longer than planned, but it's actually better this way, because otherwise it would have been out at the same time as my secret meanings.

you can find (and buy) the collection at rubicon press, or you can wait and get a signed copy (possibly even signed by both alex and me) from either one of us. i'll let you know when i/we have some copies. watch this space.

here are two poems from the chapbook - the first one by alex and the second by me:

Dear J_______

I want to forget you ever loved me, forget that time can stop the bleeding
and it's possible to walk again after my legs have been broken.

Let's go back to the city where we met—I'll wait in the restaurant
where you watched me make a fool of myself with that dark Rapunzel.

If it were possible to fly and watch stars waver in place, teeter on the brink
then topple down a mountain—I wouldn't want to change my name again

and again. I should know how this works—there are only so many miracles
to go around and mine have been pawed over by too many greedy hands

and now I find I have nothing. I think about waking up godless and hung-over,
waiting for ocean waves to collapse on the beach, hoping for someone

to fish me out of the sea. We are supposed to believe that death is bold—
a loud noise from behind, the roar of a train, the sharp crack of a gun

and beginnings are never sudden movements, they're soft and unobtrusive.
Last chances are smoky bar rooms overflowing with harsh consequences,

consequences that will cut you off at the knees and leave you blind.
I rearrange the faces of lost friends and lovers

until all that's left is a punch-drunk Sisyphus, stranded on a hill—
disenchanted and ordinary.

Ever yours,

L_______

* * *

Dear L_______,

Unlearning to love you is like sucking back sand through the narrow
waist of an hourglass. I already have a desert in my throat, a desert

crossed and recrossed by words that have begun to shape my mouth:
never; again; your name. Sometimes a question slips from underneath

my tongue: Did we let it die too quickly? But we both know that death
is not bold. Death grabs what he can get, strangles his victims from

the shadows between streetlights. He chooses wisely—never anything
that will put up a fight. The end was like the beginning—a moment

we missed, the way you'd miss a landmark from the window of a train
that moves too fast, eyes aimed too high, too low until you realise

you've already gone past, and you slam down the window, crane your
neck and hear the air rush in to push all words of loss and longing

up your windpipe. There is no going back, not to a morning of soft
sunshine on unfamiliar skinscapes, not to the city where we met;

it no longer exists. Its roads have moulted, the pines shed needles
like flakes of dry skin. Everything we touched, has been touched

a thousand times since. Rapunzel's hair has fallen, again and again,
like a rope, like a ladder; the streets to her tower echo with laments.

J_______

oh and the cover photo is my dad's. :)

song of the day: iieee by tori amos.

this girl is pissed off with the bloody universe

2008-03-25T18:58:00.003+01:00

just my luck eh. i meet a guy, have the most perfectest evening in aaaaaaaages, he gets this amazingly high score on the what-michi-wants-and-needs list, and then (are you ready for the anti-climax?) - it turns out to be bad timing.

thank goodness the weather is not mocking me - snow, snow, snow, dark skies.

now if you would excuse me, i have to go and feel sorry for myself.

song of the day: same as yesterday, only more so. almost lover by a fine frenzy.

not a happy bunny

2008-03-24T11:02:00.002+01:00

Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do

song of the day: almost lover by a fine frenzy.

milestone and dateline and lots of laughter

2008-03-20T22:13:00.006+01:00

so. this girl slept in her bed for the first time in a few months last night! i had actually been thinking about it for a couple of days now, and yesterday it just felt right. i slept very well, too, thank you. so - the sofa is now a sofa again, and not michi's bed.

okay, now, is the correct definition of dateline a series of dates? *g* i seem to have thrown myself on the market, and i am beginning to enjoy myself. i had a date yesterday evening, with yet another facebook friend, howard, who's originally from canada. of course, me being austrian, and him canadian, we had to go to an aussie pub! it was fun. lots of music talk, and i guess most of you know that i am a sucker for that. music, er, rocks! :)

amazing, but true - four days after the weekend, my flat is still clean and tidy and i have even managed to hang up most clothes after taking them off. do i need to start worrying?

i had my first chocolate ice cream of the season at tichy's across the street last night. of course, like every year, winter made a comeback as soon as the ice cream parlour opened. today, it snowed about 27 times, in between we had sunshine, rain, a thunderstorm, and all of the above at once. not nice. this girl is all for spring!

most of my green muffins and cookies did not survive st patrick's day. my students did. ;) it's been a good week; more fun in class today. here are my two "old guys from the muppets show", aka werner and mahmoud, laughing their, um, butts off (excuse the poor quality - mobile phone, and not exactly close-ups). and just because nadine said "i am cooking him tonight". ;)

song of the day: constant craving by k d lang.

book tag

2008-03-16T20:18:00.003+01:00

liz did the tagging, i do the job and tag on ...

How to play:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

the fifth sentence says: "Oh, I don't know."
the next three sentences say: "Is it all right or not? - Search me. - I can't concentrate either."

ha.

the book is tom holt's you don't have to be evil to work here, but it helps.

arsenic, collin, sara k, ivy, and nathan - you're it. if you like. if you don't, you're spoilsports. or i have missed that you have already done it. ;)

second song of the day: this is the life by amy macdonald.

saturday night girl

2008-03-16T00:21:00.010+01:00

what is this girl doing on a saturday night? partying? going on a date? watching a film? relaxing? nope.

this girl seems to be in some sort of cleaning frenzy. it started with the putting away of the wedding stuff the other weekend, and has not really stopped since: today after turning the kitchen into a green-tinted battlefield (aka baking green muffins and cookies for st patrick's day class), i did not just do the dishes and such, but scrubbed and wiped and washed etc the kitchen into this uncannily clean place.

while thus engaged, i found out why people do not clean behind fridges: it is simply too dangerous. i cut my finger quite badly and bled like the proverbial piggy. i've also got scratches on both arms to prove i have been busy, and i am not even mentioning the state of my fingernails.

yesterday evening, i repotted plants and rearranged things in the lounge room and the bedroom, which is no longer the disaster zone it used to be for about ten days (and i am even thinking of moving back in there - still camped on the sofa). i swear it has not been this clean since i moved in. *g* i am becoming more and more like my mother lately ... time for worry mode! :D

but all this cleaning - i actually think it's more some sort of CLEANSING than mere spring-cleaning. it is a throwing out of old stuff, a making room for new stuff. it's like moulting. things are definitely moving. and i think they are moving in a good direction. i haven't been this happy with my looks in ages. i am feeling bouncy for more than just a few hours at a time. and i was both surprised and pleased on wednesday when valerio said i come across as really confident. and some day, some day i am even going to write poetry again, i am sure.

what with the baking and cleaning, i completely forgot to eat - a slice of cold pizza, one greenish muffin and a couple of cookies was all i had to eat today! or yesterday, really.

but i am quite pleased now. i almost don't mind anymore that there was no-one to go out with tonight. ;)

* * * * *
and now for something completely different:

i just finished reading into the wild. have not seen the film yet, but i had to order it on dvd anyway, because i want to use it in class. the book was good enough to make me buy krakauer's into thin air straight away.

i received my two contributor copies of foursquare - looking nice, right? my poem is symmetros - upper left.

and more copies of the secret meanings of greek letters have arrived - i hope to sell some of those at the lit fest in a month's time.

i am in love with the song of the day (off the fantastic grey's anatomy soundtrack), and with this:

check out v's website. it's worth it. i guess this guy is going to have to design my someday book cover ...

song of the day: breathe by anna nalick.

bouncy girl

2008-03-13T22:15:00.003+01:00

this girl spent most of yesterday smiling, giggling, chuckling, laughing: first at work, with my lovely students, and then with valerio - one of my new facebook friends. yep, this girl went on a date. :) a drink, a walk, music, and lots and lots of laughter. oh, and of course, zombie talk and ice cream. pretty close to perfection. ;)

more laughter with my morning class today ... it is lovely to get paid for something that is so much fun. the afternoon class - well, they were not interested, so i gave them a chance to improve their computer skills and had some time for prep work and chatting.

song of the day: run by amy macdonald.

no more sick girl!

2008-03-10T20:16:00.004+01:00

this girl is no longer sick. well, sure, some people would start coughing discreetly if they caught me claiming that, but they're all friends of mine, so that's alright. ;)

it was soooooo lovely to see my students' faces light up on seeing *this* girl and not a sub-girl (or guy). it was also nice to have a guest speaker in my afternoon class, which meant i could get some prep work done and actually get paid for that (and playing scrabulous *g*).

this bug-free girl went to the poetry reading on friday - it was rather quiet, some of the usual suspects were missing. i rdead, but was not too happy with my performance. maybe because i was not sure about what to read, up until the last moment. and perhaps because my mind was elsewhere, at least part of the time. ;)

this single girl didn't have such a great saturday afternoon: decided to finally put all things wedding in a box - dress, bag, cards, etc - and had a bit of a breakdown. strange mood ensued. thanks again to the wonderfully wise, witty & lovely nicole for cheering up (and on). and to v. for making me laugh. repeatedly.

this smart girl finally beat david at scrabble ... and he sooo deserved this revenge of the most scrabulous woman!

this girl was positively bouncy today. spring in the air?

and this girl has the song of the day looped in her mind (does that make me loopy?) -

song of the day - with a nod to valerio: start wearing purple by gogol bordello.

this girl

2008-03-07T00:18:00.004+01:00

this girl is still sick. but right now she is smiling anyway. because someone made her. :)

this girl is also trying to come up with clever answers to nic sebastian's 10 questions on publication. so far, kristy bowen, reginald shepherd, carolyn guinzio and nate pritts have answered.

this girl received kristy odelius's bee spit in the mail and is looking forward to reading it.

this girl would like to congratulate suzanne frischkorn on the publication of her american flamingo!

this girl is hoping to be well enough to go to the open mic tomorrow night.

song of the day: sonnet by the verve.

sick girl

2008-03-05T22:52:00.003+01:00

okay. so it was NOT sensible to go to that party. alright alright. *grrr* i've been sick all week, no work (ie no money *grrr*), and not as much fun as usual. i actually really miss my students. i hope they miss me too! :)

instead of staying in bed all the time like a good girl, i am spending waaaay too much time on facebook, scrabulous and in chat - catching up with friends, and getting to know new people. this is the only thing that can keep me from sleeping these days, it seems. *s*

song of the day: wednesday by tori amos.

party girl!

2008-03-01T15:10:00.010+01:00

as i was not feeling too great yesterday, i slept all afternoon and then did what all sensible people would have done: i went to a party. :) hillary, one of my vienna-based poet friends, was having a flat-warming party, and i really did not want to miss it. i very nearly did not go, but then decided to drop in for a while - and ended up staying until 10 past 2!

to begin with, nathan and alina and later on ronnie, too, had a priceless conversation about pink rubber garments. all because alina was in istanbul and ... ah, never mind. *g*

then hillary and her belly-dancing group entertained us for a while, which made me want to join their classes. i guess there is nothing sexier in this world than a woman who is comfortable with her body, no matter what it looks like - and these ladies seem to be. ronnie joined the dance eventually, although he looked more like a rambo-esque suicide bomber than a dancer of the seven veils ... :) and nathan promised to dance for me after class, so this lucky girl has something to look forward to - right? right. :D

in the kitchen, there was some teacher talk, we dissed birmingham (that included the brummie colin who managed to get away to lovely vienna), and not many of us said "no, thanks" to some pot.

ronnie read us greek fragments, from sappho et al, very entertaining. and of course - being ronnie and delightfully silly - he cut out the lines with juicy bits - no sugar added from an orange juice carton and stuck them on me - good thing i was wearing a low-cut top, not! *g*

much later, when the number of guests had dwindled down to about ten, there was some dancing, but i really did not feel like that last night. ronnie and i planned a new career for yusuf islam, formerly known as cat stevens - as cat islam. we pretty much have the cd covers ready for in print in our heads, and we have renamed some of his greatest hits: matthew and cat, tomcat and kitten, wild cat, if you want to meow - meow, the first scratch is the deepest, kitty d'arbanville ...

a very drunk steve gander and i recited leonard cohen's famous blue raincoat, but then it was time to go home.

i was so glad i went - i laughed so much, had a great time, and flirted with at least three men. possibly three and a half. :)

i slept in today, then watched yesterday's episodes of grey's anatomy, gilmore girls, and men in trees, and met andreas, one of my facebook acquaintances in chat. i am running a temperature, and will return to bed after i've made me something to eat. outside - storm and rain; we've had storm warning, up to 120 km/h expected.

song of the day: girls just wanna have fun by cyndi lauper.

vienna lit fest 2008

2008-02-28T12:37:00.003+01:00

the programme for the vienna lit fest is now available online: lots of really interesting readings and workshops, so if you are around from 17 to 20 april, make sure you drop in! i am reading with sandra huber and sylvia petter on 17 april, 7.15 pm. and i just got a little nervous about it ...

the sun is shining, we have just watched little miss sunshine in class, and i am not 100% fit. :(

song of the day: mannen i den vita hatten by kent.

unexpected

2008-02-27T18:05:00.005+01:00

remember the money troubles? the company that would not pay (could not pay)? i just had a pleasant surprise - and i mean, SURPRISE: when i checked my bank account just now, i saw that the company had paid me 30% of what they still owe me! there has not been a letter or email or anything, so this came out of the blue. i honestly expected never to get that money, but it looks like i was wrong! if i weren't so knackered, i'd be jumping up and down. :)

song of the day: i believe you by rotifer.

foursquare

2008-02-25T22:40:00.003+01:00

i finally heard from jessica today - my poem symmetros is part of foursquare 2.6, and i cannot wait to get my hands on my copy!

for a monday, this day was not too bad, and this evening has been positively ... stimulating. *grin*

song of the day: almost lover by a fine frenzy.

lazy sunday afternoon ...

2008-02-24T14:10:00.004+01:00

yeah right. i wish! i have to get loads done today, because i did not get anywhere yesterday, not really. but since prep work for tomorrow involved watching the whale rider (we're doing maori culture), it isn't quite so bad. :)

friday night was fun - sweeney todd was, erm, bloody good. :-p sabine and tom and i giggled our way through the movie and the rest of the evening.

and it's funny that when i venture out into the real world once in many weeks, i bump into three people i know! justin from my CELTA course in 2004 with his wife, then evelyn from labyrinth / open mic, and finally sharron, who was also in my CELTA class! strange too that the last time i saw justin and sharron was when they starred in a play, about 14 months ago.

i've made friends with my new laptop which is running on windows XP (ah! the relief!), flirted a little (not with my laptop), played scrabble and slept too little.

it's lovely outside today, spring weather. might persuade my inner teacher that there IS time to enjoy some sunshine ...

song of the day: never seen the light of day by mando diao.

one laptop, a name stamp, three tops, a trench coat and a pair of jeans later ...

2008-02-22T17:58:00.005+01:00

yep. i spent loads of €€€ today. actually, no. make that L O A D S. all i wanted to do after a very nice lunch with birgit at akakiko, was check out whether a store across the street had laptops with XP installed and not the horrid, crappy vista. [insert rant here.] what i did not know before was that i would walk out with one. it actually has both vista and XP installed, but i already know what i will and won't be using. so this is the new addition to the household:

i checked out one clothes store, s. oliver, where i had never actually found anything - but today was different. of course, having lost so much weight means that i find more things to wear. the shop assistant was very sweet, and also honest enough to say "nah, that doesn't suit you" or "that's not your colour". i ended up buying three tops (one of them is this, in marjoram), a short beige trench coat, and i even found a (much-needed) pair of jeans! yay! for someone who does not normally enjoy shopping, it was surprisingly fun this afternoon. (and hooray for credit cards! *g*)

i am quite tired right now, though cheerful. and i found out that kristy bowen's billet-doux project (dancing girl press) has been finalized! the limited-edition boxes containing 15 poems by 15 female poets can be bought through dancing girl press. i am sooooo thrilled to be part of this, and i am in such excellent company - this is the line-up: jayne pupek, erin bertram, bronwen tate, cecelia pinto, shawn fawson, diane kendig, christine hamm, jeannette sayers, suzanne frischkorn, annie finch, emma bolden, julie enszer, ariana-sophia kartsonis, kelli russell agodon, and yours truly.

if i can manage to stay awake, i will be at the movies tonight, looking at mr depp.

song of the day: mercy by duffy.

sunday girl

2008-02-17T11:40:00.002+01:00

i'm really proud of myself because i managed not to work all day yesterday. i allowed myself some reading time, some girly book, not sophisticated at all. :) it was chilly outside, stormy, and anything from blue skies to blizzards, and it was nice to be curled up in bed (on the couch, actually, which has become my bed these past weeks) with a nice cup of cocoa & chili tea.

today, i slept "late" - or what has become "late" - ie nearly 9 o'clock, and i have been fooling around on facebook, playing some scrabble moves, on the phone to gudrun, and listening to the wonderful kitchenwitch mix cd that the lovely theresa boyar sent me. just the kind of music a girl needs. next in line: nicole's equally great mixes!

now my to do list is only about 25 entries long - easy peasy for a wonderwoman like yours truly, eh?

song of the day: sunday girl by blondie.

best of the net 2007

2008-02-15T21:55:00.003+01:00

i almost forgot to post the link to the best of the net 2007 anthology where you can read my poem what is the sound of one hand clapping? (first published in juked). i am in excellent company: dorianne laux, simone muench, charles jensen, and another 16 terrific poets.

song of the day: waitin' for you by bob dylan.