This is me, between one root canal and another (in one day!). My endodontist warned me that I won’t be up for eating later, when he clears out the four canals of my dying molar and gives me enough novocaine that I can’t feel my head. “Eat a good lunch,” the assistant said. So I did: cinnamon millet bread with butter, runny eggs served up, corned beef hash. Something that will stick to my stomach for the rest of the day.

What’s your comfort food?

Easy recipe for Phoebe’s Asparasta:

• On toaster baking sheet, place one nitrate free sweet italian sausage, one green italian pepper (sliced) and a handful of sliced asparagus. Slather with jarred minced garlic, spray with olivio and sprinkle with sea salt.
• Broil for 7-10 minutes. While broiling, boiling whole grain linguini.
• Drain pasta. Toss pasta with broiled veggies, sundried tomato, and cheese.



• Impersonate Cthulhu.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this blog isn’t helping my job search any.

It’s been a productive few weeks.

My thesis is defended, and, shortly, will be submitted. I had my final MFA reading, which went well (sometimes you can feel these things from the eye contact of the audience alone!). I submitted my manuscript to four chapbook contests. And wrote a poem.

But mostly I spent the last week in mushy love-land, as Jordan was visiting. We didn’t do much, except eat, and talk, and bask in one another’s presence. But it was just so nice to have him around, to be able to turn my head and peek over into the other room and talk to him about stuff on metafilter.

The apartment is quite a bit more lonely now. I’m getting work done, slowly, but surely, to fill in the gaps, and I picked up a Mercedes Lackey novel from the library, which has put me in a nice, otherworldly mindset (the type of escapism that good fantasy is for, I think!).

. . . but still, I miss him.

I’m trying to title my thesis. Since I struggle over finding the right name for individual poems–since I still haven’t found anything near appropriate for my sci-fi manuscript (referring to it in conversation as “that novelly thing”)–this is not an easy task for me.

I had a place-holder title in my head for the last month or so: Where We Remain, which is in reference to a quote from Rilke’s first “Duino Elegy”–”For there is no place where we can remain.” This feeds into my Death Thing, a theme lightly touched on in my poems. And I staunchly disagree with Rilke–one of the places where we remain, of course, is in our art. I write in part because I have a Death Thing, and because writing gets me one step closer to immortality. My thesis would be, then, like saying, “Here, Rilke; this is where I remain.”

The problem is that that all sounds terribly pretentious. And I don’t really like the title. It’s too What Dreams May Come, too Remains of the Day.

Which is to say, it sounds too much like a thesis title.

So now I’m thinking Transmutations, or some permutation of Transmutations, maybe Transmutations of Ozone and Ash, which has a nice ring to it, but might be too much of a mouthful. There’s much more magic and weirdness in my thesis than there is death stuff, really. It’s all about transformations, most fundamental/elemental, or at least physical. And I like the link to alchemy.

But I’m still not sure. Maybe this is normal. Last night, I hung out with Michele, and she talked about her own shyness over her own thesis title, and the work inside (despite the fact that it’s all good). There’s something about a thesis–and about naming a thesis–that feels like ripping oneself open, exposing oneself. Especially a poetry thesis. And how can you summarize that, title it, without appearing a bit silly?

(Maybe I should just title it Something About Bees?, question mark included.)

Any thoughts on this, Gentle Reader? Any opinions or suggestions?