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Remembering Elizabeth V Aldrich, Remembering Eris

I’ve been thinking about posting about Lizzie here almost since the day she died and I ended up waiting long enough (three months) that her birthday came. Lizzie would’ve been 30 today. Feels strange that it wasn’t that long ago I was thinking ahead to her birthday, planning on sending her a card and the minor logistics of that and then she died and all that didn’t matter. I’ve already written about her in a lot of ways, in tweets, in Instagram stories…maybe it’s hard to explain just how special she was if you didn’t know her but I’ve tried and I’ll keep trying. I’ve already semi-formally written about her on the Forum blog [was going to link to it but the post isn’t up anymore, will have to look into that; in the meantime, might put the text up somewhere else]—Forum was the whole reason I knew her—so rather than doing that again, this will be a compilation of sorts of thoughts about her from notes or tweets or whatever and I don’t plan on definitively finishing it, I may add onto it this or that, add new thoughts or old thoughts I haven’t included. Lizzie—Eris—is someone I don’t think could be summed easily, there was so much to her…and I think it’s somehow appropriate that she’s Eris to some, Lizzie to some: she couldn’t be summed by one name or even a “long pain in the ass name” (as she once referred to her full name in a bio)…

I. (7/11/22)

That first night I kept thinking she can’t be gone over and over like a mantra. I didn’t sleep much but I remember waking up thinking that I didn’t want to live in a world she wasn’t in. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to live but the world suddenly felt hollowed out with her gone…she’d come to mean so much to me.

2012: I had no idea who this girl was, no idea how much I would come to love her.

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notes on an open mic

I was looking in drafts for something I thought I wrote about the recent world of online readings…only to discover I apparently hadn’t actually written the draft I thought I did but found this instead. What this is is a draft of a post about a reading I started more than two years ago…

It’s not finished and I think I’ll leave it that way because as it is, it’s an interesting time capsule…not to mention it both does and doesn’t feel like a long time ago in a way that unintentionally kind of encapsulates the weirdness of time in this covid era. The draft I was looking for it turns out was on a USB drive, and I’ll get that up soon (maybe).

…Or me annotating myself (which you may have noticed, I kind of enjoy doing). You may have also noticed I don’t get around to things. This was originally conceived as a few notes on Voz Sin Tinta in February, and March’s Voz just passed (more on that in a sec).

February’s Voz fell on Valentine’s Day this year and while plenty of what I write is about love in one way or another, I was trying to decide what I should read if I did read in the Voz open mic when I came up with something…except this ended up being an instance of when I think of something I should read then can’t remember what I thought I should read and then it’s two days later when I remember.

In this case two days later was after Voz. So what to read? Well, speaking of forgetting, I don’t remember what I did read (I think it was one I’m calling “Atoms II” because it’s a bit like something else I wrote before that I’m calling “Atoms I” though I’m not in love with either as titles) but I prefaced it with a passage I love from Carrie Brownstein’s Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl.

To be honest, I’m not sure anyone knew where I was going with that. I was, I think, trying to connect it with my poem. Perhaps it also worked on its own, I think it’s really fascinating because in it, Carrie Brownstein is talking about the process of making Sleater-Kinney’s album The Woods and the song “Let’s Call it Love” and how she and bandmate Janet Weiss perhaps were trying to go somewhere other bandmate Corin Tucker wasn’t quite ready to go and a kind of strain showing up in Corin’s voice because of that. It’s a great song I introduced my reading that passage by saying it’s what I might choose as intro music on Valentine’s Day had I had any and indeed that’s what made me think of it in the first place.

But also, what’s interesting about that passage is that while it isn’t explicitly about love, it also seems to me to comment on it: like making music with other people, it’s complicated, it’s tricky, you’re not always on the same page.

Here’s the song:

Actually, I wasn’t completely sure I should read from Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. I generally prefer to just do as expected, read a poem and get in and get out as quickly as possible. But in mulling over the idea, I had to see if there actually was a copy at Alley Cat I could read from. There was of course but what cemented the whole thing was that when I opened the book I literally turned right to the very page said passage was on.

Of course I haven’t posted in months. Which is not to say I haven’t had ideas, or haven’t started on some of them. This post itself has been sitting in ‘drafts’ for weeks. Sitting in drafts for even longer is a still unpublished love post. Will I ever finish that? No idea.

Anyway, I eventually remembered what I wanted to read on Valentine’s Day–“this ain’t no mecca”…having remembered, I thought about reading it in the meantime at other open mics but it never happened. A month passed and I was at Voz again. This was just a few days ago and it was their 6th anniversary show.

me…eh, not so much. Since I hadn’t read “this ain’t no mecca” in February (for a while I thought it’d been two months since I forgot what poem I wanted to read…before remembering last month was February, somehow I added another month in between then and now) I thought I’d read it then. I don’t think it was my best read ever but I did get some good feedback so at least one person seemed to enjoy it.

recent events remind me of the limits of love

where I don’t post for months and then do a flurry of posting and then don’t post for months

I feel like I’ve already written this poem

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Voz II / La Parabla II

‘II’ because I featured at Voz Sin Titna for the second time and because I featured at The Music of the Word/La Parabla Musical for the second time.

In fairness, it probably won’t make much difference to who shows up but if you have a writing-oriented blog it just makes sense for you to mention on that blog when you’ll be reading things you’ve written.

So, yeah, while I meant to mention the most recent readings I did, I never got around to it. And considering the state of the world, the lockdowns/shelter in place orders, the coronavirus, I likely won’t be reading anywhere for quite a while (on a side note, if not a feature, which hasn’t happened a ton, I’ve been reading at open mics pretty consistently for a few years now and it’s a little strange for that to suddenly stop…but then everything’s strange lately.

Anyway, I read at both of those places in February and it was great to be back as a feature (though I’ve been to Voz plenty since and at least a couple times in the months leading up to La Parabla).

There’s always such a spirit of sharing at Voz – in the space, in the reading, both features and open mic folks. I read with a cough drop the whole time by the way. This wasn’t planned but was a product of bad timing on my part but it seemed to go okay anyway. Though I can’t believe I forgot to mention Valentine’s Day when I have so many weird love poems (this edition of Voz was on the 14th).

Thanks to Rene, thanks to Marguerite, thanks to Ash and fellow feature L. Sherman.

La Parabla offered some surprises – like me semi-hosting for the last half of the event and as with Voz there was a great variety of stuff read (and sung!), powerful stuff from features Wolf Hawk Jaguar, Tony Aldarondo and
Tureeda Mikell, great to hear from all of them as well as the open micers; thanks to them and to Avotcja.

* * *

Voz and La Parabla are both, I believe, continuing virtually in the face of the lockdowns and whatnot. There seems to be a lot of that these days, physical reading series becoming Zoom reading series. I actually have no first-hand experience with them so far which might be surprising since I used to go to a lot of readings but there are complications for me with these things, complications I wouldn’t necessarily have foreseen if I’d anticipated the need for virtual readings (and I’m sure there were virtual readings before the pandemic but I don’t know of any).

You might think a virtual reading is a lot more convenient than a physical one and that’s probably true for a lot of people—you don’t actually have to take the time to go anywhere and all the readings I go to require a not-insignificant amount of travel—but for me it’s been awkward. Most readings seem to be at dinnertime and while I’d just figure something out with regard to dinner if I had to go somewhere, the particularities of dinner at home mean I’m not really online around then and I tend to forget about those virtual readings.

Besides that–and this is probably* the bigger thing–the idea of logging onto one of these virtual readings provokes a also not-insignificant amount of anxiety in me. I’m somebody who does not at all enjoy the act of calling someone. To put it more succinctly, I hate making calls, I’m better with taking them but the rub with the online reading thing is the prospect of “going” feels like making a phone call and while I know probably it’ll all be fine after logging on, I’m having trouble seeing past that barrier. I could go on but right now I have other things on my mind. I still assume I’ll tune into some virtual readings sooner or later because we’re a very long way from normal…

*Definitely is.

 

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Acknowledgments…

Before moving on to my (likely sporadic) posting for 2020, I’d like to take a moment to look back on 2019 in my little literary/poetical corner. When it comes to getting out of the house (apartment), going to readings is the thing I do the most these days and I, of course, featured a couple times last year so thanks to…

Paul Corman-Roberts and J.K. Fowler (once again) for having me at Nomadic’s Balcony Open Mic; to Abe Becker for inviting me to read once again at another Nomadic event in Get Lit; and to Kelechi Ubozoh and Cassandra Dallett for adding me to the bill for Moon Drop’s Origin Stories show and last but not least, Amalia Alvarez for bringing me onto Ekphrastic Extravaganza and for generally being awesome.

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Pic of the poster fro Ekphrastic Extravaganza, designed, I believe, by J.D. Weaver

To the people behind the readings, I go to on the regular–Marguerite Munoz, René Vaz and Ash Tre Phillips of Voz Sin Tinta; Jerry Ferraz and SF Poet Laureate Kim Shuck of Bird and Beckett’s Poets! (and Eric Whittington, proprietor of B&B); Jennifer Barone and Ingrid Keir and Daniel Heffez and Nova Jazz.

Furthermore, to people I love to hear read/see/was struck by this year, etc: Christine No, James Cagney, Maya Sisneros, Jevohn Tyler Newsome, Katie Aliféris, Guy Biederman, Tony Aldarondo, Kwame Opoku-Duku [III], Avotcja, Anna Allen, Katie Dalla, Gaia Thomas, Thea Matthews, Garrett Murphy, Hilary Brown, Katie Tomzynski, Matt Duckworth who taught the poetry class I took in ’19; Kevin, classmate from that class and many others, poetry class friend Ana…

This is not meant to be comprehensive but apologies to anyone I’ve forgotten…not to mention there are plenty of people whose work I enjoyed, open micers, everyone I read with in one way or another, the features, the fellow open micers et al…Y’know, it was a pretty good year…despite all the simultaneous terribleness in the world.

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A Brief Look Back (Balcony Open Mic)

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Read in a balcony, not this balcony but I don’t have a picture of that balcony

Okay, I meant to actually post about this beforehand because it’s just the kind of thing you should do but like several things last week I ended up a big behind the 8 ball and never got around to it (I’ll also point out here that this happened quite some time ago at this point). The it I mean is that last Friday I read at Nomadic’s Balcony Open Mic. I’d attended in in February and enjoyed it quite a lot and then got invited to feature this month.

It’s been a while since I’ve featured and read as much (a little over 10 minutes) and with all those things referred to earlier that I had to do I was scrambling a little to make my final decisions on what to read. A little note on the process here–at least for me–I didn’t want to be hunting around for what to read or really decide what to read while I was actually reading, I wanted to have a pretty set idea so I wouldn’t have choices to make that might trip me up, always a concern with me…other people might be able to go off the cuff somewhat but with me, I’d like to keep it simple.
My initial idea was to group all I wanted to read in order in one file which I could then print out. I did already have printed copies of a number of things wanted to I read so maybe that wasn’t entirely necessary but it would’ve been simpler than getting together all the previously printed or hand written stuff with the newly printed stuff.

In short I didn’t end up having time for that and in fact I didn’t make my final decisions on what to read until I was on the way there. This led me to use the file but to use it by reading it off of my phone…something I’m not a big fan of just because I like having the paper in my hand and because I don’t have to worry about the paper running low on battery power.

How did it go? Long story short (I know, I know, too late) it was pretty great!

There were plenty of familiar faces (I feel like I use those words a lot, maybe I should start tagging the posts where I use it) including the other feature, Hilary Brown who I’ve now had the privilege of hearing read a few times.

My reading from the phone went pretty well, all things considered, and I think I generally read pretty well, I brought some old stuff, and some in progress stuff which reminded I want to roll out more new stuff…which reminds me I have to actually finish more new stuff.

My thanks to Paul Corman-Roberts, to J.K. Fowler; thanks to everyone who came out as well as the musical guest (whose name I unfortunately didn’t catch but he was quite good), Hilary Brown and the open micers who all made it a fine night.

 

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Origin Stories!

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Time to dust this off (and no, I can’t believe I haven’t posted at all here in 2019). Why? I’m reading tomorrow night (June 12th) as part of MoonDrop Productions’ Origin Stories Show.  Honestly, it has a great lineup of readers and I’m definitely excited. It goes down at 7:00 pm at…Original Pattern Brewery,  292 4th St, Oakland, CA. Further info at the “book”.

P.S. The picture is of Christine No’s “Origin Story” which is fantastic. She’s not on the lineup but seems like that would kinda fit right in…

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I have to go feed some cats

I neglected to use that line when leaving Alley Cat Books after Voz Sin Tinta last night…

…because I didn’t say goodbye to anyone

…which happens when it seems logical to me to leave more or less immediately but then I kinda feel bad about it

I thought I hit the time when I had to leave

But cut to an hour later and the bus has only just come…

(yes, it was late but I left way earlier than I actually had too making the disappearing act unnecessary ah, well)*

 

But never mind that, it was the last Voz of 2018 and it was amazing. The features – Michelle Lin, D’mani Thomas and Katie Aliferis all had distinct voices but as Marguerite and/or René (who curate Voz) say there was a kind of synergy between the poets (as well as those who read etc in the open mic which was also amazing), pieces fitting even though no one could’ve planned any of it. I could go on but it was a great way to end the Voz Sin Tinta year.

 

(the cat thing while out of the ordinary for me is/was indeed true (perhaps appropriate since of course Voz takes place at Alley Cat Books)

 

 

*Don’t ask what I’m doing here because I don’t know. (Why is it centered? Who knows…)

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Notes From the World of M-21

Just looking today through some old notes for a fictional universe I’ve created (which for no particular reason is called M-21). I don’t talk that much about fiction around here but it’s something I’ve always been interested in writing (maybe I have said that before) and I love science fiction and fantasy, the fiction of the fantastic.

Anyway, the notes I was looking through are about a future interstellar civilization and there are a lot of interesting ideas in it. The thing about all this stuff is I’ve had all these ideas at various times and I like a lot of them but they’ve never really been fully integrated into a completely cohesive world. I’ve had versions of the world of those notes but with only one part or another of the various ideas I’ve had appearing prominently and it struck me tonight that this fictional world would be a lot more interesting if I brought more of this stuff together as parts of one world.

To put it another way, I felt like I’ve done some world-building in the sense that I’ve crafted some solid bricks…but I haven’t actually put those bricks together into a singular structure. Actually putting the bricks together, that could be fun but it may also take some work, there’s a lot to fit together, a lot to try to remember and there’s also the question of what I’ll end up doing with it. Not that writing is ever easy but in a way poems are easier than writing fiction–a poem can be a thought, but even a short story is more like an argument, it has more moving pieces so there’s more to get right for the thing to work. So while I don’t see myself abandoning fiction anytime soon, I’m not sure working on this material will result in the stories they’re theoretically a backdrop for. But then again, I find this stuff fun and building the fictional universe in itself might be an end of its own.

Then there is poetry itself. I did start down the poetry path to examine my own fiction in another way and science fiction poems have been something I’ve been meaning to write more of. The great thing about poetry–today anyway–is you don’t have to explain everything and not entirely explained the bits and pieces of a fictional world could work in poetic, figurative ways. Part of my looking through the notes comes from a partial effort at organizing the material in beginning to put together a glossary of the terms etc I’ve used but the flaw in that is it still places them somewhat in isolation, not integrating them together with the other parts…Uh…yeah, anyhow, maybe I should get back to it!

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The 2 Losers Poetry Group

For Elizabeth V. Aldrich

We would call it the 2 losers poetry group. We are not hip enough to be a collective

but we write words, string them together in what people say are pleasing ways.

Of course neither of us have the confidence to cop to being any good.

What would collaboration mean, anyway? I imagine us in a montage,

the setting urban, this city’s strange pastel density.

We are honing our craft, bouncing poems off of each other,

speaking rhythms at microphone stands. We trade tapes

of ourselves—Thora Shabazz would be proud—finding

the imperfections, breaking tape. Of course it would not

be the two losers poetry group if I had any conviction

any of this would happen. We’ve grown worse at staying in touch,

no trips to the grocery store, smoke breaks rare.

And it’s not this city, not really, I think it’s modernity, busyness,

too much to juggle. So what if we two understand something

about the inevitability of our romancelessness? So what

if we understand the urge to love even if we are incapable of it?

It is not personal, this apartness, there is no enmity but

cities are oceans, we swim in them like sharks mile after mile searching

for our own kind. At 1:00 am I can imagine the glow of the sign on a bus

is the lure of a giant deep sea fish ready to swallow us not into further darkness

but into fluorescence, into illumination on the way home. I’m not sure

I’ve ever learned anything on Muni after midnight. Like the sea,

my mind is diffuse, in a thousand realities at once.

Do you drive home feeling the same?

We should write a poem,

trade verses, we should learn, line by line

what it means to be a person. That’s why—isn’t it?

—we know each other; we’re like the sea, the shifting

patterns, invisible waves—each a map

of the person the other might be.

* * *

Notes:

First of all, I should say what I said when I read this in the open mic at Voz Sin Tinta this month– namely that this was (very) loosely inspired by the Unbnd Collective of two poets who are definitely NOT losers: Kwame Opoku-Duku and Karisma Price. Kwame I know from Forum, Karisma Price I only know from her work online (which is fantastic, BTW). It’s not about them, it’s not actually literally about anyone in particular, mainly it was that two-person collective idea that just got the ball rolling.

It is something of a sequel to/continuation of “Notes on Why I’ll Never Have a Girlfriend,” my revisiting some familiar themes as I seem to constantly do.
Perhaps trying to define friendship?

Dedicated to my friend Elizabeth V. Aldrich after her death in July 2022. As indicated above, it wasn’t written about her, in fact, we weren’t even in touch when I wrote it but we reconnected in what turned out to be the last few months of her life. It wasn’t written about Lizzie but somehow it describes almost exactly how I felt about her. One of the interesting things about trying to process my feelings and having had trouble writing something besides prose about her is that in a sense I’ve found her in other things I’ve already written, as if I’d already written about her but didn’t know it yet.