february 9, 2001. i'll probably regret writing this entry. but: This imagery presentation didn't go as well as I wanted it to. I mean, it went wonderfully, really. We gave groups little packages of cut-up words & had them collectively make a poem. The energy level of the class was amazing; far from doing the minimum amount, two groups used all the words they were given. The creativity was astounding. The enthusiasm of people towards both their work & the poetry of others was unbelievable. The work...well, I'm running out of superlatives. Let's just say that I wanted to keep & display every poem they made on the walls of my house. As for performances, one student read his work in a crazed-beatnik-Tom-Waits voice that got everyone howling. And my professor loved it so much that she immediately began to figure out ways to get the exercise into several education journals. scraps: before dieing she troubled me... I Eat THEREFORE I was ...flashy cadilac traffic was narrow... ...shaved very sharp animal-like ribs... ...howling into perfectly remembered bed... But. My fellow presenters were driving me nutso. There was another presentation before us, so we had a chance to interact before the presentation. And it was horrible!!! Big Sur & Flower were completely in their own world, not letting me (or anyone else) contribute one word to the "group consensus." Meanwhile the Anti-Stephen was lost in some strange reverie of his own, emerging only to taunt me (I had tried to make a joke about DeForest Kelly - how was I supposed to know that there was someone on the continent who'd never seen Star Trek?) I was so mad by the end of it that I was cursing a blue streak. Our presentation was okay, but there were sour notes. Such as: when I muttered how much I was enjoying myself during our exercise, all three of them looked at me like I was from Mars. Such as: during discussion the Anti-Stephen was praised to the skies for his creativity and I thought, "oh shit, it's St. Jack all over again or maybe it's Poet, either way I'm standing here watching a boy get all the glory." I felt worse than invisible, I felt like a barely-tolerated nuisance. I started to feel like this at the end of the coffeehouse planning session, actually: I just got distracted by liquor and cigarettes and the Boy before it could become full-blown discontent. I hate - HATE - being in a place where I'm ignored. That hurts worse than dislike, almost. And that affects my memories, too. All my good feeling about last Monday is gone. All that's left is a hot wave of disappointment. I wanted this to be the coolest thing ever, and it was merely a huge academic success. "Merely." hm. And then, watching Big Sur & the Anti-Stephen flee the room without even saying 'goodbye' or 'good work'...and of course, feeling like I was about to cry...I went to pick up some heavy video equipment from the art teacher. And how was I supposed to get it up the hill, me with the arm strength of a thriving newborn? Hadn't thought of that, of course. The only thing that stopped me from bawling right there in the library at the foot of the hill was pride. No matter what, I was not going to show weakness in the middle of a bunch of undergrad jocks. Good old pride, as Q might say. And good old library. Within minutes I found a ride, thus relieving me of the chance to spend the entire afternoon in the library whole waiting for the Boy to come home from work and rescue me. Surrounded by the aforementioned jocks for 6 hours & desperately pre-menstrual, I probably would've done something desperate.