I woke up early (and grumpy as hell; I'm sure Rod loved making that wake-up call) and took Pigwidgeon to the vet. Poor little bird, faced once again with the giant stethoscope and the bumpy car ride. And those little unhappy noises, and his tiny head poking out of the vet's hand-- break my heart, why don't you?

I got some new antibiotics, which I have to put in his water twice a day. I have no idea how I am going to manage to bring Pigwidgeon to Journalcon with me, but I'll come up with something. Anyone want a small, squeaky, rather dumb bird in their room? I am sure the hotel staff would love that.

I had barely enough time to bring the bird home again and give him his first dose before I had to go back to Berkeley to meet with Professor President. But he called and said he'd be late, so I had a nice big breakfast and got some writing done. It was a nice little interlude.

Professor P showed up eventually and we had our thesis meeting. He had gone through and made little suggestions on a lot of my poems, but he did comment that it was less revision than he usually would do. He said that this was because, and I quote, "You have craft."

Do you have any idea how much those words meant to me? All this time, I've been fearing that I haven't learned the craft, and here he is, a professor whose poetics I respect entirely, telling me that I have. It was the most amazing validation for me. He would probably laugh if he knew how much value I assigned to his casual words.

We also talked about the fact that I have re-embraced the witty side of my poetry. I said that sometimes I feel the need to push it aside to write "real" poetry, and he said, "Oh no, don't. The world needs funny poets." He says that he finds it almost impossible to be funny in his work, and he actually admires my ability to do it. I was, once again, floored. I'm ready to dedicate this freaking thing to him.

He also said that in spite of the fact that he likes my [insert fancy vocabulary word that means witty and somewhat conversational] style, he likes the times when I allow myself to be lyrical, and he thinks the lyrical pieces are going to be like "the raisins in the cake." I don't like raisins in cake, but that is neither here nor there.

On the next go-round, I am going to reassemble the entire thesis thus far (it's forty pages long, I am starting to think there's a light at the end of the tunnel after all) and begin thinking about sequencing. Where to put the raisins in relation to the walnuts, as it were. (Boy, if I liked either raisins or walnuts, this metaphor would work a lot better.)

One other noteworthy thing was that one of my poems is talking about a balloon being "limp in my mouth" and the speaker is wondering "what to do with my tongue?" and it's all very filthy. We both were chuckling over my tendency towards the flagrantly erotic and I said, "I have come to terms with the fact that my manuscript is trying to seduce its readers."

Which is true, and I think that might be the theme of the forward I have to write. I'm always trying to seduce my readers. How you doin'?

So the meeting was great, and halfway through, my SAT student called to cancel today's lesson. I was going to have to drive to Alamo and back, and be late for my closing shift (which my boss already knew about) and be stressed out on top of it all. As it was, I was able to go home, type up the poems I had written, make the revisions Professor P suggested (at least the ones I agreed with, which were most of them) and print out the brand spanking new thesis.

I contemplated going for a bike ride instead, but I was unwilling to part with my thesis enthusiasm in favor of biking. One of those tough decisions where exercise and writing seemed equally important, but I promised myself a bike ride tomorrow.

In other poetry news, I had a very San Francisco moment yesterday. I was carrying my Van Gogh painting poems through the school building when I ran into Professor P and he started looking at them (he loves Van Gogh too) and this old beatnik sort of guy came up and asked if he could see them. He said complimentary things and introduced himself as Diamond Dave and said he runs a poetry reading series at the Brainwash Café, and would I like to do a feature?

The especially cool thing about this is that the café has a webcam, and if you are really intrepid, you could log onto their webcam and watch my poetry reading from wherever you happen to be. That was the first thing I thought of! Not that you all are dying to see me read poetry, or anything, but just in case, it's a nifty possibility.

After writing the above, I went to work and actually took a look at sequencing over my lunch break. It's really fun to see how poems segue into each other and argue against each other in weird ways. The interplay there. The last line of the book so far is "I dissolve." I think that would be a good way to end it.

The poems are a combination of prose poems, lyric poems and poems that fall somewhere in the middle-- they all engage with the body one way or another, and if I ever had any doubts that this was a good thematic idea, they're gone now-- the creative possibilities seem endless. The vast majority of the poems so far are in the first person-- I guess that's only natural, but I'd like to have some more that talk about Bodyness in the Platonic sense, maybe, or at least make me feel like less of an egocentric.

Pardon me while I wait for the hearty laughter to die down.

As if you couldn't tell, I am as excited about my thesis project as I've ever been. It's starting to feel like a real thing, a tangible (and publishable! let's don't forget publishable) thing. I flagged the five or so poems that I am not really happy with (although a bunch more are hot off the presses and I am sure my ardor for them will cool in time). So I need to try and revise those, and fine-tune the rest, and write enough new stuff to fill up twenty to thirty more pages.

It's daunting, yes, and I know this creative high won't last forever. But my thesis is gestating nicely, and damned if I don't feel good about that.

Right now, the below poem is the first one in the book. ("Book"!) It sets up a lot of the themes I'm looking at: body image, sexual attraction, love, womanhood, death... okay, so it sets up all my themes. Check that out! I think I might have picked a good beginning poem.

a question of trust

I've pulled a muscle, busted a limb, it's all wrong
and there's a mole on my chin, hair on my arms

I'm turned off by my own husband on my wedding night
turn off the light so I don't have to look at

my veins, which contain anemic cells
or my fingers, which always tell the absolute truth

at the moment when secrecy is most required
as in situations of unrequited love

and my belly swells, whether from fat or a baby, I can't tell:
I don't want either of these

I believe what my grandmother told me before the cancer came:
trust your body, darling. nothing it ever does is wrong.