So gone...

Anyone who uses this blog to keep up with me, whether you know me or not, must be wondering whether I still exist. I do, but I sorta feel like I don't. No! It's not bad. It just is. Part of it has to do with the fact that I lost my glasses (again!) and so things more than ten feet away are pretty fuzzy and at the same time my left ear is blocked up. Ew. Things should be back to normal since a new pair of specs is supposedly on the way and I've been treating my ear with some drops and trying to wash it out with water, but until then, I am the faintest tinge of deaf and blind and everything feels thrown off. I am not the me I used to be. I can't hear so well so I don't listen, and I can't see, so I walk around touching things. It's weird. I don't exist, see?

I also don't exist because Richmond has swallowed me. Well, really it's this new grad school program. Intense, I'm telling you. But it's good! Mostly. A class on theory which is seriously cramping my style with a long paper due next week and tons of reading and then another paper at the end of the semester. Then also I am writing new stories. Two so far since I've been here, one in the next couple weeks. And I'm liking them. My fiction workshops is my favorite two hours of the week--not my most exciting or funny or anything extreme like that, just favorite. I've also managed to get my schedule working so that I have good time to write in the mornings. And then there's the writing center, which I give 10 hours/week to. I sit and face students from all over the university and whatever writing assignments they have for class, for 30min a pop. As you can imagine, some intriguing stuff comes up, a random list of it as of late: dream interpretation, eating disorders, business speak, King Arthur, childhood development, discrimination against Arabs, Plato... Oh, and if you are in or near Richmond, Virginia next week you should consider coming to hear me read as part of our graduate reading series, Moveable Feast, at the Visual Arts Center on Main Street, Fri, Oct. 24, at 7pm. Free beer and wine! Come on, you know you want to.