queJimenez...a pieced and quilted writing life

The weekend after unfriending everybody I know, and some I think I know.

*click to enlarge

I did a very brave thing this past week: I deactivated my facebook account. Let me tell you how good it feels--eating dark chocolate covered almonds with cold vanilla almond milk after a weekend of finishing off homework that consisted of: 400+ pages of reading and writing two essays--good. 

The very picture of focus. Color me proud.

I should insert that I am not eating dark chocolate covered almonds with cold vanilla almond milk and that I only read 300 of my 400 pages this week, but the line about the essays is true indeed. I should be fine dining now as I've wasted lots of calories sitting in the same place from Friday night to tonight--reading.

But this is not a post about my insane amount of homework, nay*, it is a post about my willingness to rebel against social media and void myself from the grammar hell and wicked life that is facebook.

Now that I think about it, I take offense that "book" is a part of the name of the very thing that keeps me from reading "books." 

I'll pump my brakes here. My goal is not to bash fb, but instead to share how the past 4 days pfb (post facebook) have been productive, and great.

I realized that there were only 3 reasons why I kept a fb account: nosey, bored, and an aid to procrastinate. 

Most times I was just being nosey about folks' lives because I was either bored, or procrastinating. 

It's funny, I haven't set about creating a New Year's Resolution (untypical), but I have been highly reflective of my life since the new year slipped in (typical). 

I want to spend more time writing, quilting, reading, painting, baking, and gardening. I've spent a lot of time reflecting on why I didn't do these things and I kept coming back to time. School has been the cookie monster of my life and free time is the chocolate chip cookie he's after.

I honestly can't begin to relate how busy life is while pursuing a higher education degree, while homeschooling two kids and having a husband, who maintains a full and demanding job, and pursuing an even higher education degree. Let me say it again, "What were we thinking?"

Never mind, don't answer. We'll both be done this year. This year. This year. This year.

I need to remind myself of the "this year" part. I packed my summer schedule to include six! classes so that "this year" will happen, for both of us.

So what have I done pfb?

I started a gratitude journal.

I started curating articles on readitlater to read in my (non-existent) free time.

I started planning an ongoing art project that involves a vision board.

I got a lot of homework done.

I spent some quality time with E.

I decided to be a part of an upcoming art show. (Yikes!)

I brainstormed some short story ideas.

Not a lot, I know, but it's only been a few days. I think more important is that I don't find myself yelling obscenities at my laptop at people whose faces I don't remember, but names I do...or faces I remember and names I don't...or who I don't remember at all. 

The truth is I found that I didn't really care about most (let's say 90%) of the people I was "friends" with. (I know that sounds mean, but I'm playing the honesty card--cut me some slack.) The few that I care about, I really care about and I'd much rather cultivate "real" relationships with them where we truly connect and not read passing updates of each other's lives. How sad is it that phone calls don't happen anymore? Or letters are not mailed? Or friends don't get together over coffee or tea, but rather fb updates?

I want real friendships. 

Well, partly. I'm a recluse after being married to a wonderful, friendly, kind, anti-social man for the past 12.5 years. E's made me a hermit, but sadly, I have not made him out-going--outside of me and the kids. To us, he's the life of the party, but to everyone else, he's the un-blooming wall flower.

So there. Enough time spent writing on unfriendliness and antisocialness.

I am finding myself in a happy, introspective, learning-center place. I told E yesterday, "I have grandiose dreams and aspirations that feel bigger than my little body."

So here is to finding hidden spaces within the crevices, crooks, joints, bends, and marrow spaces of this itty-bitty body of mine. Space where all of these grandiose dreams and aspirations can find soil and nourishment to live.

Here is to me writing, quilting, painting, gardening, baking, and reading up a storm.

The rebellious nerd,

Ki

*I am reading TONS of old literature...notice how it is bleeding into my writing voice, my diction. 

This week in literature reading...this week in moving past fear.

Have you ever read Homer's The Iliad--in one day? I did that Saturday, and in some literary sense I know I am the better for it. Not the one day, but the reading.

I am reading "classics" this week, also last week, and probably next week. And at the same time I'm reading Moll Flanders, by Daniel DeFoe, perhaps more famous for Robinson Crusoe, which I have never read, nor heard of till the first week of this year (along with Moll).

As I was reading Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Wollstonecraft last week I fancied up a long post in my mind about the importance of reading the classics. Necessary reading for writers was essentially my thesis, my point. But then I started hating it. And then I got to class, after I had read all obscene amount of pages, and learned from my peers, my contemporaries, that they gave up and didn't read it all. (The horror!!) Then we had an hour long talk about each reading and me, the girl who LOVES to talk and discuss, me, started to get bored, then annoyed, and finally indignant that I was getting out of class at 10pm. I might even dare to say that me, yes me, the girl who LOVES to speak up in class (and has been reprimanded for it--unjustly--my classmates were being stale and not talking) was pissed. I also need to add that I think I might have possibly, if E is right in all his manly wisdom, had a small, teeny-tiny panic attack in class. An hour before she let us out--at 10!!

10 pm does not sit well with me and my student colleagues.

All that dampened my spirits for talking about the classics, because at that point, in a class where I and a grad student (who is taking the graduate equivalent of my undergraduate class) spoke most of the time (along with the professor--whom despite keeping us an hour past the decent hour of learning--I like) and I ended up having nothing else to say about the classics.

And then today I read Plato, The Apology of Socrates. (For another class.)

I could string together a necklace of word pearls of wisdom, knotting the red silk after phrase and phrase and phrase, place a golden clasp at the end of them all, and wear those *few* phrases around my writing neck forever.

Picture me sitting with legs crossed, blanket around my cold shoulders, fan whirling motes at a corner wall in the background, sunlight shining in on me and my colorful bed...writing

(Excuse my exaggeration; I have read over 200 pages in the past 36 hours. That doesn't include the 150-200 pages I read the days before the weekend.)

I really enjoyed reading Plato's defense of Socrates. There were moments when I stopped, underlined, starred, and then said, "Ohh, that's where that comes from."

If you've read Hamlet (for the first time--after high school or whenever most people read it) you'll know what I'm talking about--those moments when you realize where certain sayings, quotes, thoughts come from. Well that was my experience with Plato's Apology--not with On poetics, which I read (and hated) last week.

Here are the pearls I gathered for my writing necklace:

"So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is,--for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know."

"I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that the others less esteemed were really wiser and better."

"Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them."

"A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong--acting the part of a good man or of a bad."

And here is where it really got good, and I started thinking of you--my lovely blog:

"I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil."

"You, my friend,--a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens,--are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?"

"For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul."

"...no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death."

 Maybe it's just me, but these "quotes" moved me. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has heard that "the man who knows anything knows he knows nothing at all." I've always loved that saying. 

But take a look at some of the other quotes...the one on poetry, the one about doing right, the one about fear. Are these not pearls of wisdom, great guidance for those of us who like to think, ponder, wonder about things like inner soul, life & death, good vs. evil?

I've talked about my decision to pursue an MFA in creative writing so much, and though I stand firm in my decision, I have to be honest--I'm scared. Scared of rejection, failure, debt. Is my voice developed enough? Do I know enough? How do I compare with other writers? Will I go into debt for a useless degree? How will it change my life? Will I get accepted--anywhere?

I really can go on, but I rather not. Plato (& Socrates) tells me that it is not good to fear a possible good. And is not that graduate degree a possible good?

For sure it is a certain evil to deny myself that which I love, writing, telling stories. What would be more awful than denying yourself what you love for fear? Living your life with that fear and knowing it got the best of you.

A year ago me and E were hemming & hawing over our decision to go back to school. Him to pursue his MBA and me to finally finish my bachelors. It was such a monumental, engrossing decision. There were spreadsheets, and visits, and informational meetings, and price comparisons, and FAFSA's. I was scared. E just informed me he was not. (But he's never scared about anything.) And look at us, a year later, in the swing of it and all the better for it. I have maintained a 4.0 and he has a 3.8 or 3.9. We are doing it and doing it well. A notch on my confidence belt.

I'm hoping my shared quotes will mean something to one of you. They pushed me a little further past my fear and opened a world of understanding about Socrates for me. I must admit that after reading On Poetics last week, I didn't hold Socrates in high esteem; I didn't care for the way he bashed poets, artist, carpenters. 

Moving past fear feels delicious. Even though somewhere up under my skin, perhaps under my arms or legs, it swims and festers trying to work its way to my brain, heart. But I fight the good fight. I tell myself that I will and can do that which now seems so far and impossible. 

Tell yourself the same thing.

Ki

San bernardino dreams: What you know about writing?

Last night I woke up at around 1:30 am as E was going to sleep. I felt under the pillows for my big, black, nerdy glasses and was instantly annoyed when he reached on his side of the bed for them. You have to understand I prefer to sleep with my glasses on; in fact, I think E pulled them off my face thinking he was doing me a favor, which he does a couple nights out the week. Usually he puts them on my nightstand.

Seeing is everything for me. I see to understand. When I write, I see the words as colors, shapes, or abstract things that need to be arranged like 2D, imaginary, poetry/prose paintings. I love my mind's eye. I should have that printed on a t-shirt. (Don't steal it--karma is real.) When I think ahead about times and months down the line, I see it. It's like a weird calender/life/picture/vision/photograph amalgamation of the past and what I imagine that future month will be. And it is so translucent, so veiled--like gossomer. If I allow myself to linger and ponder it to much--poof! it's gone. Those are my gossomer moments. I've had them since I can remember and have learned to let them float in the space they crave. I know that all sounds crazy, but hey, I'm giving you a peak into a creative mind. Talk to God about it, it's the way I was made.

But I'm going off on a tangent here; I promise I'll get back to the seeing/glassess/sleeping thing.

So I woke up, E hid my glasses, I got them back from him, he started snooring, I kicked him to signal him to turn over, he grumbled then obliged me, and then I started thinking.

I wanted to write a letter to God. I got all Cellie on myself and wanted to grab my cobalt mbp and "Dear God" it. I was writing the words in my brain over and over again. I was stuck on the Dear-God-Comma part. Because after the comma my brain would start writing/telling God all I wanted this year, and how I was being good and focused, and how I thought I was a good person, etc. It started sounding very christmas list to santa to me so I did not pick up my cobalt writer. Nope. You see I had to nudge E again, which always annoy me because he tells me he's just breathing. All lies. And then I wanted to wake him up because I couldn't stop writing my Cellie letter and I thought, "If I wake E up, make him sit-up so he would really pay attention, tell him the letter that I want to write to God, ask his advice--what will he tell me."

*Insert nasty feelings of guilt*

E does not believe we should ever--under any circumstances--ask God for things. He thinks it is not religiously correct. I was already swiminning in religious guilt when I told him before falling asleep at 10pm, "I know that you want to read the Bible together as a family tonight--but my eyes hurt, I'm sleepy, and I need to wake up early in the morning to read classical critical theory."

So anyway, I did not wake E up and I did not mimic Cellie. Instead I watched two dvr recordings of the Nate Berkus show, before watching my favorite insomniac show whose title I can't remember because I'm usually half sleep (ABC 2am-4:30am). In between fast forwarding commercials and watching commercials I spoke to God. Very politely.

I thanked. I expressed gratitude. I aired my desires.

"All I really want," I whispered to the ceiling, "Is some advice--a nod that I'm going down the right path, and perhaps some suggestions and assurance that if I keep up my end of the bargain (working hard) you'll keep me where I need to be (which I know may not be where I want to be.)"

If you haven't guessed yet--I'm still obessesing over graduate school. Not if I want to do it, but if I'm good enough to get in. (I'm insecure and I can admit it.)

In true God style the fan I use to drown out E's snooring kept whirling, and the t.v. show eventually put me to sleep. Soon.

Enter crazy, vivid dream that felt so real it took me 30 minutes to shake out of it's reality when I woke up.

I dreamed me and E went back to the PAL Center in San Berdo where we met and that girl who almost had a chance to date my precious E was still working there (I silently smiled and told myself to remind E that I saved him from her soon as we got into the car.), Dr. Henry offered me a job, Lawrence was being Lawrence, Tammy was being busy Tammy, Jerry was walking quickly from bungalow to bungalow, and everyone was happy that we were still married 13 years later, and of course was pissed we didn't bring the kids. (Where were they at?) They were building a new, bigger Pal Center and the entire orginal office bungalow was being bronzed. Yeap, the whole building.

So there.

I woke up, I read, I ate my toast with mango butter, I told E about the dream, he told me he ran into Lawrence last week, I told him "crazy, ironic--why didn't you tell me," he told me he forgot, the end. Almost.

I went on to call him again and loathe the writing sample I'm thinking about using for my MFA manuscript, then hung up because I needed to "let him do work".

And then it happens. I remember an experimental piece I wrote last summer in a creative writing class at my university. I pull it up, I read it, I re-love it. 

Guess where it is set? The area around the PAL Center. Yes, I smiled a smug smile when I said that out loud as I typed it. 

So now, you are reading my thank-you letter to God. 

I had completely and utterly forgotten about those 14 pages of wonderfulness.

What does this have to do with my big, black, nerdy glasses? The ability to see...duh! See the truth in situations, clear vision, follow me? Let me sleep with my glasses so I can always have clarity in my dreams...hokey I know. But, to a visual artist sight is every-damn-thing. I don't see colors well without my glasses. True story.

What do you know about writing?

Do you know how hard it is to switch from academic writing to creative writing? Do you know how incredible hard it is to have characters show up, trust you, and tell you their stories? Do you know how much of a brain shift you have to do to go from writing critical essays about literature to writing your own literature? Do you realize that I write creatively in southeren dialect (because that's how my characters tend to talk...and hey I'm just the typist) and academically I was accused by my last professor in my Research and Writing class for writing too sophisticated. She actually dared to give me a low A--which I challenged and she changed because she agreed my intended audience needed that sort of language. Do you realize the mental acrobatics and tongue twisting writing I will have to do this year to finish my BA and get my manuscript in order for graduate school?

I know all these things--and hello! that's why I'm obsessed and waking up at 1:30 am acting like Cellie.

But, this is the part in the letter to God when I express gratitude for restoring my belief in my voice and for those gentle gossomer moments, and vivid dreams that allow me to be creative and remember that is the way I'm made.

E is not made like me. I'm not sure if any of the kids have wacky artist tendencies yet, so I am on my own around this house in my skiddish, artist ways. I have artist friends that I are like me. But I also have fellow Type-A personality classmates that are really like me.

I'm an amalgamation, like most people, but I'm just crazy enough to share it. I tell E all the time he doesn't understand what it's like to be an artist-type, because he doesn't. Life is all too easy for him and his type. Numbers are neat...they add, they subtract, they multiply and divide, hell they even do tricks like plathagoream theory stuff and other weird things I learned in AP calculus and physics in '95.

Writing, painting, poetry writing, daydreaming is not neat like the rest of the world.

So before I make a mad dash to University tonight...let me encourage you to do something...

Hug an artist if you know one...especially us word picture artist.

And while your at it, take time to thank God for everything.

Ki

P.s. I have no time for spell, grammar, and punctuation check...so consider me a painter today instead of a self-professed, grammar-loving nerd. Because in all honest...that nerdiness does not come naturally...I actually have to work at all that wonderfulness.

The secret life of books.

 

For the love of book covers, reading, photography, music, and color...this is amazing. 

I just had to add to the craze...and share! 

Enjoy fellow nerds!

2012: When nerds rebel.

Is it really ten days past New Years?

I haven't even set a resolution yet. No family goal discussion over a plate of black-eyed peas, cabbage, yams, cornbread. Nope. We were unconventional this holiday season. But not necessarily in a bad way.

I started the holidays (well two weeks before) stupid sick. Sick-sick. Lost my voice, swollen throat, head in my pillow coughing until I couldn't breathe and staring at the ceiling asking God why sick. The kind of sick where apple juice drinking feels like heaven. It took me a week to get out of bed, about two weeks to fully get my voice back, and about three weeks to stop coughing, etc.

Out of 34 years of life, that was the only time I have lost my voice and let me tell you, for a girl who talks a lot and is proud of it--it was ALARMING. (I secretly prayed that when my voice came back I would sound like Anita Baker. No luck.)

Booo to being sick. Yay to only parents being sick and kids remaining healthy. For the first time in their lives I was quarantined from them. None of us was happy about that.

So once Christmas came, and went...me and E went on a "let's do everything we can't normally do during the year because being higher education students while homeschooling our kids is kicking our butts" binge.

We:

1. Caught up on last season's Dexter. (Don't judge us.)

2. Were total lazy bums for like three days.

3. Finally played grown-up Monopoly with the kids. (E got Boardwalk--I instantly wanted to quit.)

4. Drove to Cabazon (where I purchased for our family a yellow 7.25 qt. Le Cruset second-cut dutch oven) and got dates and old fashioned candy at Hadley's for good desert traveling measure.

5. I started reading Nella Larson; E finished The Hunger Games.

6. Finally got around to completing the beds we started in September for the kids. (But we didn't actually finish them--painting furniture is more time consuming than you believe. So now we're aiming at 'by February.')

7. Painted our front door red.

8. Painted my nightstand the best shade of yellow the eyes could ever see.

9. Cleaned my studio and I started (and just about finished) a painting.

10. Made tamales, four different types of cookies, sweet empanadas, gumbo, homemade applesauce, and vegan lemon bread. (This was mostly my handiwork.)

11. I started an embroidery project.

12. Pinky-swore we would do project 365 together. (Let's just say we haven't had an official start yet...)

13. Made baking rap music videos with our iPhones (while I was still sick and barely breathing w/o coughing and my voice was rather iffy), with me being lead rapper and the kids being my b-girl & b-boy. I'm not embarrassed to admit I used a whisk as a mic, shoulder-shrugged and threw it into the mixing bowl for effects. Nerds have swagger too.

14. The kids finished books. Yael-I can't even count...something like 4 or 5. Michael-1.5

15. Took the kids on a neighborhood photo/video shoot to play with their new cameras (still and video). 

I know I'm leaving something off the list, but the bulk of it is there. We did a lot. It felt good. I'm sad it is over.

We had a sort of "running conversation" during this time about life pre-higher education. We kept looking at each other in wide-eyed confusion asking, "What did we do with ourselves before school?" Like really? Having time off from school really helps you realize how much time school takes. Well, once you realize how much "time" you have to do something like school, you realize how much time you waste doing stuff like T.V. couch-surfing, nose-picking, and other numb-brain things. 

E has this year and then he is done with school. Forever. Me. Holy-smokes...I don't know how many more years of academia I have ahead of me. Nerdom will be my life well into my 40's--I suspect. 

Which brings up something else.

I am officially a senior.

Senior-status people. *I just screamed that silently in my head and smiled*

AND--I maintained a 4.0 the total of 2011. If I had some music I would stand up and do a jig in the bed. But, it's just me and the whirl of the fan so I'll do the cabbage patch in my mind.

That feels really good.

But it is being overshadowed by obsession on my behalf. Two words:

Graduate School

I have been freaking out since Saturday, about 11 am to be exact. I have been obsessed for the past 70.5 hours.

I have called three programs, inquiring and asking questions.

I have surfed the web so much my eyes feel like ash rubbed over sandpaper.

I have stalked a blogger who is in a program I'm *thinking* about.

I have called E at work and balked, talked, cried at him over my *dilemma* for hours. And, I texted him while he was in class Saturday...totally freaking out and letting him know to call me the second he got break--over 3 texts. Bad wife.

I have talked to myself in the car, on the way to class, giving myself pep talks and rationalizing things out (this occurred last night).

I have rationalized that if I allow myself the indulgence of a graduate degree in fine arts I will never drive a new car to offset the money, and I will happily continue to drive my 12 year-old Honda and 7 year-old Hyundai for another 10 years, and not complain--unless they overheat, which always freaks me out. (Baggage from driving a Ford mustang for 3 years...not E's new, red mustang he bought months before I came into the picture..the 1985 one I brought when I was 19 that was 11 years old.)

I have asked my mother's opinion, and she knows nothing about higher education besides "don't go into debt over it." I don't think she even wants to talk to me about it again, because "I'm worrying too much," she says, and what's soon to follow is, "You getting on my nerves." I love that my mama keeps it real. (Though that means she is no help if I get all obssessive, which is generally the case.)

I have wrote a list of former professors to stalk for mentor-ship, reccomendations, begs and bribes to "please read this manuscript and be honest about how bad my writing sucks, so those choosing my graduate school life/future won't know how bad I really suck until it is too late, they have accepted me, and have bought into the idea that Kiandra Jimenez will one day be a really good book writer." (You heard it here first.)

I have maybe, sort-of invited myself or been invited to attend a day of residency in one of the programs I'm considering this coming June. (The details of the conversation are sketchy. I may or may not have been asking so many questions that that offer was the easiest, quickest way to get me off the phone.)

I have in a round-about way asked E to ask his mom to retire in 2013 so she can watch the kids while I maybe (if I get accepted) attend graduate school. (In my defense, she has been talking about retiring for a couple of years and has told me she will do anything to help me finish school. So divert your evil, judging eyes and stop popping your neck.)

I have read countless articles that say advanced degrees in the humanities are a waste of time, effort, passion, breath, air, eye-gazing, obsession, work, and anything else that requires human energy. In fact, they suggest that if you plan on going that route--don't reproduce because you are insanely stupid and the world deserves less of your kind, who might one day decide to do the same thing you were warned about doing: graduate degree in humanities or fine arts.

I have considered paying $775 to attend a 4-day workshop to get my manuscript in line. Not good when you are still paying off credit card debt. (Even if you have managed to pay off over half of your over 24k debt in 2 years through pure sacrifice, furloughs, state budget cuts, growing/hungry kids who insist that eating three meals and snacks a DAY are necessary for their growth/happiness---go team Jimenez!)

Can you feel the sigh coming? No?...hold on...

*shoulders fall*

So that is what the last 70.5 hours of my life has looked like.

That is what happens when a type "A" personality decides to go to fine arts graduate school for creative writing. 

(Is that what happens when nerds rebel?)

Is it okay that I want to scream? Is it okay that I don't want to make no decisions about nothing? (How's that for double negatives?) Please tell me that is okay. It is totally fine with me if you lie to my internet face. In fact, I give anyone reading this blog permission to make the decision for me. Go ahead; I don't mind.

This week decisions are hard for me. 

I'm afraid of living too much on the edge, being selfish and throwing my life away towards a bag of school debt, indentured servitude to Sallie Mae, and unfulfilled dreams of writing, quilting, reading, gardening, baking, and painting.

Besides world peace, my kids continually being all-around awesomeness, my husband continually being the kind of husband legends are written about, good health, new counter tops for my kitchen, a chalkboard door in my house, and one last conversation with my granma...I only want six things in life.

Six.

Writing--Quilting--Reading--Gardening--Baking--Painting

Can my life just be that? I don't think that is too much to ask. I'll even give up granite counter tops for something like Corian or large tiles. In fact, I'll even paint the chalkboard door myself. (Cheating, I'm going to have to do that anyway.) I won't give up the one last conversation with granma though. Or the kids, or E. 

It's official. I have made the decision...I'm applying to MFA in Creative Writing Programs at the end of this year (for next year) and I will worry no longer. About that decision.

Now...how to prepare my manuscript? Damn decision-making.

My head and eyes hurt.

The end, Ki

P.s. To prove I'm still a nerd I worked in 2 appropriate uses of semicolons. Professor Johnston would be so proud. I did work in some dashes also, but those are easy stylistic choices. No cool nerd points for those.

P.p.s I'll stop being lazy and upload pictures soon. I have a boat-load of reading to do since I have spent the last 72.95 hours obessing over MFA programs. 

Merry Christmas...from my family to yours!