Fourth of July and anthologies

Happy Fourth of July, everybody! I'm writing this entry from Idyllwild (which is a place in the mountains in California, which is where I happen to live). I'm here on holiday for the Fourth and I seem to be getting a fair bit of writing done (including - gasp! - some fiction, something I've not been very good at for a while).

Anyhow, I've got some exciting news relating to my writing. I've previously mentioned the Romanian litmag Nazar Look, which has in the past accepted two of my poems. Well, I got something in my e-mail the other day, saying there was a contract I ought to sign. I didn't know what it was at first, but when I looked at it, I found out that it was an agreement for usage of my two poems in a poetry anthology Nazar Look is putting out. This is significant. Not only is my work going to be anthologized for the first time, the publishers asked to be able to anthologize it. This isn't like submitting something and hoping they'll accept it. It's the difference between an actor auditioning for a role and an actor being called by a film studio because they want them to play that role. Man, I love progress.

So that's how things are going. For anyone reading this who lives in America, happy Fourth of July, because independence is awesome. For anyone reading this who doesn't live in America, I'm a happy American having an American holiday. And for anyone reading this from any country, I'm personally pleased for the state of my writing career, so at least hurrah for something!

Humor in Other Languages

It’s fascinating and a little sad how I will probably never be able to fully appreciate Russian humor.

A friend of mine (who happens to be Russian) was over yesterday, and at some point, the subject of Russian humor came up. She explained to me what Russian humor is like – often dark, self-deprecating, and full of wordplay or at least amusing phrases that are very funny in Russian but astonishingly not-funny in English. Some of the jokes she translated into English, I found amusing, but for the most part, I understood on an intellectual level that they should amuse me, but the emotional level (the level that makes you actually laugh) just wasn’t getting it. The “humor” part of “Russian humor” was lost on me because I’m simply not Russian. Yes, I suppose I could learn Russian and then experience the jokes in the language in which they are actually funny. But currently, I do not speak Russian, and Russian humor continues to frustrate me with how I know it’s funny but I don’t feel it.

The way language works is a tragic marvel. People who appreciate it (and this includes writers) can look into its various nuances and mine tremendous wordsmithing value from it. You know your own language and you know what sounds amusing and what doesn’t. You know your native tongue’s inherently funny words, and since you get it on an emotional and intellectual level, you stifle the urge to crack up when you hear them in serious contexts. Fellow speakers of your language will understand. They share your understanding of it.

People who don’t understand your language, however, will not find your humor so amusing. Much like something will sound hysterically funny in your head but incredibly stupid out loud, so the comedic value of a phrase or joke will be lost when you have to translate it into a foreign language. No one can really say the exact reason this so, which is a testament to an indescribable, ineffable quality that languages, individually and as a whole, have in the psyches of those who speak them.

As a result, my friend tells me Russian jokes translated into English, and I know they’re funny but I don’t laugh.

Last Words

Do you ever think of something you did in the past and think, "Yes, that was a good choice. I'm glad I made it"? Because I'm having such a moment with something I did about a year and a month ago. When I had to leave my old school - the only place I had ever felt comfortable or okay, the place where everything I loved or cared about was - I spent quite some time considering what my last words before effectively leaving the school campus forever were.

I was tremendously obsessed with Doctor Who at the time (I used it as a coping tactic to deal with the fact that I had to leave my school - senior year was overshadowed by a sense of dread because I knew the end was coming). I wanted my last words to be, "I don't want to go", which were the Tenth Doctor's last words and an accurate summation of how I felt. But instead, the last words I said before leaving everyone and everything were, "It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for", which were the Fourth Doctor's last words and, while not an accurate representation of the situation (I did not feel the least bit prepared), it was a better, more mature thing to say than what I would have wanted to say.

And I'm thinking, yes, that was a good choice. I'm glad I made it.

Tea - a poem read out loud

After making that video of my poem "Poet Problems", I thought it'd be cool to post another such poem. Here is me reading the poem "Tea", which appeared on my poem-a-day blog.

Those Who Fight Moths with Stuffed Dogs

I thought I was doing my aunt and sister a favor when I fought off the moth on the car door with a stuffed African wild dog. After all, they did ask me to deal with the bug, and I dealt with it in the only way I knew how - loud, enthusiastic use of convenient-if-eccentric tools. Instead, they reacted by laughing in what was partly amusement but mostly embarrassment and making statements to the effect of "we don't know you".

Not five minutes prior, we had been coming out of the grocery store at which we were buying supplies for the weekend. (My sister and I sometimes spend the weekend hanging out at my aunt's house, and we usually stop at the grocery store beforehand for milk, cereal, ice cream, and other essentials-to-life.) Either a moth had gotten into our car or it had been there all along and only made its presence known to us when we returned to put our necessities in the car, but when we got in the car, we found it sitting quietly on the inner part of the car door of the passenger's seat (my typical seat in the car).

One might have thought it was a black widow or a scorpion or some kind of actually threatening creature from the way my aunt and sister were reacting to it. As I recall it, they were sitting in their seats, recoiling and screaming like nothing so much as the soon-to-be-victims of a decidedly corny horror film. They wanted me to deal with it.

I can deal with insects, but I don't like touching them. I imagined that getting the moth to leave its place on the car door and fly out into the open night would require either touching it or getting my hand dangerously close to it. However, I reached for a readily-available weapon and decided to threaten the moth with it. Said readily-available weapon was a stuffed animal in the likeness of an African wild dog. It was mine; it is with only a tiny bit of shame that I admit I still sleep better with stuffed animals in my bed. 

They wanted me to deal with it.

I dealt with it.

With a cry of, "Get out!" and an additional cry of, "Get out, you jerk!", I waved the stuffed dog threateningly at the moth. When that wasn't enough, I hit the car door with the plush animal - not actually hitting the moth but coming close enough to make it have second thoughts about maintaining its offending position. It  flew off and landed on someone else's car door. That was all we needed. I waved the dog in the moth's general direction once more and got into the car, closing the door triumphantly.

"I don't know you," my sister said to me upon my entry. "Really. I don't know you." This was her way of saying, "We wanted you to do the very simple task of getting the moth out of our car. You instead reacted by fighting it off with a stuffed animal and yelling mild insults at it. This is highly embarrassing and we did not want the entire grocery store parking lot to witness it."

Through my laughter (for I was still quite excited from the situation), I made some statement to the effect of, "Well, I got the job done, didn't I?" I didn't wonder why this event was so embarrassing until we got to my aunt's house.

Why is it embarrassing to know someone who fights off moths with a stuffed dog? It's because such methods are highly unusual and a little bit stupid-looking to the world-at-large. Furthermore, yelling things such as "Get out, you jerk!" show very plainly that you are enthusiastic about the task, enough to yell where yelling is not required. (In the end, I don't think the moth cared much whether I yelled or not.)

People who fight moths with stuffed dogs while yelling are highly unusual people. They don't handle things the way one would expect them to. They take their own approach to it, and said approach often looks perfectly loony. Normal people do not fight moths with stuffed dogs while calling them (the moths) jerks.

Personally, I love people who do such things. They are the individuals who keep humanity from becoming dull. They are the little crinkles in the fabric of society that keep it from being flat. They are the guardians of cheerful, brilliant lunacy, and they are utterly invaluable.

If you are the sort of person who would fight off moths with a stuffed African wild dog, I commend you. You are a fantastic individual, and I want you to never forget it. If you would take an eccentric and brilliant approach to such a situation, I want you to remember that you are in fact eccentric and brilliant, and those are some of the greatest qualities a human can possess. If you ever feel as though society doesn't value you (it probably doesn't) or that you are having a hard time finding a place in the world (you probably are) or even that life is just too dull and too dark a place for a personality such as yours (it probably is), just say to yourself: "I am eccentric and brilliant. I am the sort of person who would fight off a moth with a stuffed dog. I am awesome."

Goodbye and Hello Again After

Yesterday was the third-to-last day of my aunt's school year. (This is the aunt who teaches kindergarten and for whom I did classroom work for most of the school year.) She had told me earlier about how her students were feeling about the end of the school year. Specifically, they were not feeling good about it. They had their anxieties about leaving their classroom and their teacher, and one of them was actually crying, saying, "I don't want this year to end!"

Last year, I had gone through a similar experience (although mine was less "leaving my first-ever year of compulsory education and entering into a strange new First Grade experience" and more "leaving my last-ever year of compulsory education, plus the school that had been the only place I ever felt truly comfortable and happy in my whole life and entering into a strange new college experience"). I thought it would be the right thing, then, to give them a little speech to help them through what would be a nerve-inducing time. What I said was something along the lines of this:

"Kids, have any of you heard of the word 'transition'? It means 'the time when you're changing from one thing to another'. You're all going to go through a time of transition really soon. You're transitioning from kindergarten from first grade. It doesn't help that you're losing most of the things from kindergarten, and it doesn't help that you have no way of knowing what first grade's going to be like, and it really doesn't help that you're going to spend the next three months away from school and doing something totally different from school.

"But even though you're losing a lot of things, you're going to gain something. You're going to gain first grade. You did a lot of awesome kindergarten things, but now you're getting a little older and going to do awesome first grade things. And most of you are going to be in the same classroom, too, so you'll basically all be doing the awesome first grade things together. You're saying goodbye to your classroom and to your teacher, but you'll get another cool classroom and teacher, and you can even sometimes come and say hi to this classroom and teacher.

"You're saying goodbye, but you're also going to be saying hello. Hello to other kids and another teacher and other lessons. That's kind of what life is. Saying goodbye, and saying hello again after."

The kids liked it pretty well, and so did their teacher. So did I. I thought those were pretty good words to say, and I'm glad someone said that to the kids. I think that if more people said things like that to kids and if they didn't have to figure this out entirely on their own, kids might grow up to be slightly better-adjusted individuals. I think a lot of adults could benefit from remembering this, too. Life is saying goodbye, and saying hello again after. 

Eunoia Review

I have been waiting since, what, January for my poem to appear in the online litmag Eunoia Review, and my waiting has paid off. It is on the website now, and it can be found here.

In other news, I have absolutely no idea when I'm going to self-publish that novella. I still can't get the hang of fonts. Yes, it's rather pathetic, being hung up on something like fonts. But sometimes little things can cause problems, and they have to be dealt with. I am dealing. I am dealing with the fonts.