So, flying today. Have apparently misplaced my paper ticket. Yes, that’s right. There are still people who ISSUE paper tickets. Rang United, who it was all booked with. Their response? “We have no record of you.” They said—you’ve lost your ticket? Well you’ll have to buy a new one and fill out an application. Then if there are no problems we’ll reimburse you. Seriously? So I rang Lufthansa, and they were great. Confirmed that, yes, as far as airlines are concerned I exist. Also, that with a handy six digit reference code I could go to a ticket counter and they would sort me out. And no mention of “oh, and buy your ticket all over again.” I hope I never have reason to call United again.

*

Rant over, I can’t believe I lost the ticket. It was all together, and I have the folder it was in. I remember the ticket, and am sure that when I pulled it out to give my ticket number to my travel agent to confirm my final flights that I would have put it back in the folder. Apparently not. Demonstrating once more that I apparently will be the sort of person who ends up keeping her tax information in the fruit bowl. Though I suppose if it’s all in the same fruit bowl that won’t be too much of a problem.

*

I anticipate a week of reading—being in places where I don’t know the language always leads to deep reading—and, hopefully, a little writing. Though I find writing hard during the period I am actually on the hoof. Notebook writing.

*

Reading Sontag’s diaries. Reading other bits. Books in the bag for over the break? Desnos. Darwish. Carson (of course). Perhaps I should add John Clare. A few novels. Am going to read Kafka’s diaries when I get home—they’re calling to me.

My second birthday in DC. I have, of course, talked to my mum. And, since it’s my birthday (as well as Independence Day for Mali and Bulgaria), I’m trying to ignore the whole economic crisis thing going on. I mean, I know in some quarters people were feeling ye olde “cautious optimism” on Friday, but I’m just waiting for the next thing to fall apart. And I’ve been worried about global warming for 22 years. Wait, it’s my birthday. That’s a day off worry, right?

I read some Coleridge this morning that I really loved. It was exciting, as I thought I was in the Wordsworth and Coleridge class all for WW’s sake. No, it turns out I can be a sucker for Coleridge, and perhaps I will be.

I’ve just started a research blog for my thesis project. This means that I have basically become the queen of blogs in the English department. I don’t think that’s a cool thing—just a fact. Anyway, since it’s messy, it’s pretty much a closed blog. But if you’re interested I can register you to read it. Send your details on a piece of batter pudding… Oh wait, this isn’t The Goon Show (damn it!). Email me.

And I read a bunch of Nelly Sachs on the weekend. Wow. Also, a bunch of Brecht’s poetry. Obviously in translation as my super high school German skills from year 8 and 9 don’t reach to reading… well, anything—beyond “Hi, my name’s [insert name here] and I’m from Australia.” I can also say that I study geography, even though I don’t. It’s sort of like how I can say in Auslan (that’s Australian sign language for those not in the know… and yes, Australian sign is different from American) “I have a duck.” Life skills.

So, I’m turning 29. What’s happening? Well, there’s been some nice news on the poetry front. My book will come out sometime next year, I’ll have a piece in Best Australian Poems and there’s another anthology that wants me to send some work. I also had an odd dream about a journal I could submit poetry to. I wonder if it exists. Maybe I could dream it into existence, just like, apparently, people in ancient Greece could go to a certain temple to dream their own cures.

I have to get into Serious Attention to School mode. With a side serve of Serious Attention to Writing. Any day now. Life keeps being unexpectedly busy.

For now, I’m out of doctor’s offices for a while. That’s going to be nice—another follow up in three months, but that’s pretty much it. Cyst was benign—there was really very little chance it wasn’t going to be—and I got to see some good photos of my insides. My liver looks healthy, but the photo also made it look like it has teeth. Hopefully at some point I will have these photos to put on the blog. Which I imagine might not be a big hit, but… they’re my insides, people! Sibley Hospital accidentally put two sets of photos in my file at the hospital instead of giving me the spare set like they were supposed to. I wonder if this is how the civil war general who constantly visited his own leg bone in Washington felt?

So, fingers crossed that I’m going to have a lot less drama in the coming months.

I’ve been rereading The Beauty of the Husband and starting to make notes and bibliographies for myself. I’ve got some other reading to get done for Monday—in fact, Monday is going to be a very busy day this semester. Thinking of trying to get out to some of DCs free stuff this coming week, and I’ll be going to see the Silver Jews play next week. I’m also hoping to see Juliana Hatfield on Tuesday—I’ve loved her, in probably far too dorky and devoted a way, for nearly a decade now… Without counting my love for her My So-Called Life so-called angel appearance.

Oh, and I’ve watched a truly shameful amount of old-school 90210 lately. You know what? I choose me. (Jeremy Jordan—alright!)

Just a quick update: another ER visit last night, ending in my being discharged by accident. Yes, that’s right. Accidentally discharged, and since I was gone they said I should just keep the appointment I had with the clinic doctor today. Never mind that at Georgetown this morning before the nurse got rid of me the doctors were waiting for a team of surgeons, while at the clinic I was scheduled only for another sonogram… Anyway, another night of morphine and drama, followed by a kind of lecture from the doctor today. (Didn’t I tell you to ring the clinic if your condition got worse? he asked. Well, yes, he did tell me that. And when I felt a little worse on Friday and rang, the person on the emergency number told me there wasn’t a lot they could do, but that if it got significantly worse before my appointment to go back to the ER. And, yes, once I started vomiting last night, my only thought was to get to hospital, and not to call the afterhours number at the clinic, leave a message, and wait for a call back.)

Now I have the surgery scheduled for Thursday morning. Not at Georgetown, but at Sibley Hospital. Which is, I have to say, a pretty fancy place. Not that I’ll care when the general anaesthetic hits.

Somewhere amid all the shufflings last week on Monday night (I love how they send the hospital administrators to get your ID before they give you the morphine), I think I lost my drivers license. Brilliant. Another bureaucratic thing to fix up… Oh, and my (printable) healthcare card is—somewhere. If I can’t find it, I have to find my details in order to print another card. Printable healthcare cards? Seriously?

Truth be told, I’m a little bit down about it all. Last week it was just a hassle. After a second ER visit in as many weeks, three sonograms (hey! did you know the image on a sonogram changes when you laugh? I found out today. Yes. I laughed), a few IV drips, and the news that if anything the cyst is larger, I’m pretty miserable. So, in less than 48 hours it will be gone.

I still can’t believe a hospital can discharge someone by accident. That is just awful.

In the mean time, I turn to books for solace. Finished the new Paul Auster. I liked it a lot. A few friends came up with the theory that only every second book he writes is good. This is a good one. Just finished Lisa Olstein’s Radio Crackling, Radio Gone, and have also been reading Julia Hartwig’s book of selected poems, In Praise of the Unfinished. This last book is beautiful. I’ll write more about it when all the other stuff is over and done with.

My parents arrived an hour ago. I haven’t seen them yet—they were getting out of the airport, getting their rental car, getting themselves to their hotel… then thinking about getting to Georgetown. The plan initially had been my finding my way to Dupont… but I don’t think I’m finding my way anywhere. Except maybe into dreams.

I’ve been a bit slow updating on the health stakes. And on generally getting stuff done. I ended up taking the vicoden a few days ago, and it’s left me a bit loopy since. (I’m realising that “loopy” is probably a word that no-one but my mum and I have used for 50 years… but I like it that way.)

The followup: Thursday. I like the doctor—I think he’s from a Germanic (possibly Jewish) background. Not being there for a Sunday brunch, I didn’t get to ask. He confirmed all the stuff I’d been reading—most functional cysts go away on their own, etc. Then he had a look at the thing and had a bit of an “oh dear,” moment. Well, he wasn’t worried, but said it is big, and obviously hasn’t just formed in a month or two, nor is it likely to just resolve itself. So, more tests on Tuesday. But he thinks that it is likely I will need surgery at some point—but non-invasive. I shouldn’t be out of action for too long. Good stuff.

But, as I said, I did upgrade to vicoden. The ibuprofen had been working fine. Then Robyn came, to give me her bicycle for while she’s in Hungary. (Thanks Robyn!) Now, I was sleepy, and a little drugged up already, so I probably should have known that this was prime time for me to do something stupid. Like, for instance, fall over while trying to get the bike to my apartment, and, lying something like a cockroach on its back, have the bike fall on top of me.

I laughed. Really loudly. You know, that cavernous Kate-laugh you all miss so much. Got up, figured out that I’d been standing on the wrong side of the bike—not able to use my hip to prop open the door—and got the thing up to my apartment. Lay down again. Then—ouch! It turns out when you have a painful thing in your abdomen, it’s not a good idea to fall over and have a bike fall on top of you. So, having rung the clinic again and made sure that it was fine it was hurting more (but to look out for nausea, dizziness and—especially—fever) I took the vicoden.

Whoosh. That’s crazy stuff. I’ve been sleeping very well—and for long periods of time—but also at weird hours. My professional opinion? (As a professional sleeper, that is.) There is no way House could have functioned that well while he was all painkiller-happy in season one. (Gosh. That’s casting my mind back a few years…)

So, Tuesday is a busy day. I have to first of all talk to incoming International Students about the writing center. I’m looking forward to that. Then I have to get out to my appointment. (I think the lovely Lisa is going to take me again…) Then my parents arrive later that afternoon at Dulles. Bliss!

Hopefully dodging all tricky pain/surgery related things, Paul Auster is going to be at Politics and Prose on Thursday night. I think, as one of DC’s best independent bookstores, I should be able to get my parents there, even though neither have read—or are likely to read, Auster. I am a quarter of the way through his new book, which I started two hours ago, taking a break for dinner (Sicilian Caponata) and most of an episode of Dynasty. (Oh my! The first major Krystle/Alexis catfight. I laughed out loud. Nice to know I didn’t invent high drama.)

I’m enjoying Man in the Dark so far. I have a pile of things I want to attempt to read before classes start again. Today I finished The Working Poor: Invisible in America, which I found amazing. The author, David K. Shipler, lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland—a lot of the people and programs he followed are local to DC. It made me want to go and find out more about them. I also finished reading my first book of C. D. Wright’s poetry (thanks for the tip, Brandon) One Big Self. I loved it. When I’ve been having my 2am nights (care of vicoden) I’ve been scribbling notes in my notebooks (I found one I thought I had lost… thank god. I’ve lost notebooks before, and it’s an awful feeling)—well, scribbling in my notebook when I wasn’t chatting to a friend (Chris) who had drunk coffee, and was apparently wide awake (not normally a coffee drinker… ah, the amateurs don’t know how to do these things…) or typing slightly mad emails to people.

Apparently my dopey conversations at Baked and Wired have been hilarious. Leaning on the counter, half asleep, vicoden-laced Kate.

It’s been a really busy month for independence days—and September will be busy too. After that, it will settle down. I’m glad. I’m used to doing that writing every day, but I’m hoping that I can put the time towards something—profitable? University-oriented? Who knows? Crazier things have happened.

I haven’t figured out the dates, but I am definitely going somewhere when I hand in my final paper. I also haven’t figured out the place. In fact, nothing is figured, but that I have itchy feet, and want to throw myself into someplace different before I come back to Georgetown for the teaching I’ll be doing in July. I won’t have all the time up til July free, because I’ll need to be in DC to develop the syllabus and I should be working in the writing center in the summer too (assuming it does open again this summer… it all feels a little un-pinned down.) Also, my friend Helen needs to leave the US to come back in on a tourist visa now when her studies at Georgetown finish, in order do a Melbourne University art history class in New York, which may mean a joint trip. Though I think, after a particular place in Mexico’s San Luis Potosi that she wants to go to, she’s more interested in desert islands than deserts.

Candidates? Well:

-Fly into Costa Rica and then go down to Panama.

-Fly in Mexico or Guatemala (a cheaper flight) and then go in search of a surrealist park that Helen wants to see.

-Fly into El Paso and then enter Mexico via Ciudad Juarez, and maybe head down to the Copper Canyon region.

-Live the dream I dreamt for Spring Break—a bit of Texas (desert-y Texas), New Mexico, Utah, and maybe some Arizona and Colorado too.

Going up to areas of Canada I don’t already know is also a cheap-ish possibility.

They’re my primary interests right now. I’ll probably have about three weeks I can afford to be away. How strange! Tomorrow I should stop by the health service and find out what shots cost, in case Panama wins the day. (Yellow Fever shot… also precautionary anti-Malarial medication.)

In the mean time: studies. It all continues.

I’ll find time later to write a few words about a poetry reading I attended Sunday night, but at the moment my mind is firmly ensconced in: Anne Carson, Carolyn Forché, George Eliot and Milton. I read Book X of Paradise Lost earlier today and I’m thinking my way through the short paper I’ll write on it for tomorrow, about the sounds associated with the punishment both of the denizens of hell (I just like the word denizens) and of Adam and Eve.

I spoke to Professor Ragussis yesterday, and he’s very happy for me to work on the epigraphs in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda—I’m so glad. I remember being fascinated by the epigraphs in Middlemarch—and the opening epigraph of Daniel Deronda is a doozy—and Eliot-authored. (It reminds me in its quite sweeping address of the opening paragraph of Middlemarch, and due to its length it almost seems like more of a first paragraph and an epigraph.) So, I have to read Bakhtin and some other bits and pieces, find embedded quotations within chapters, and see how the dialogue between these and the epigraphs works. As Cher in Clueless would say with a squeak, “Ooh! Project!” Yes, I realise that I really do know how to bring the tone down again. It’s not all lofty heights in my mind…

I’m excited by a new anthology from Graywolf Press, New European Poets. (Also, incidentally, the press publishing Monica Youn, who I saw read at the Library of Congress a while ago.) The book has an amazing array of poets, and covers (I think) all the countries of Europe except those tiny enclaves San Marino, Andorra and Monaco. (I don’t entirely know what’s going to happen when I get to these places in the Independence Day Project. I don’t want to admit defeat!) The only thing that I do find a little depressing is its design. The cover looks like a green “European Poetry for Dummies” or a computer manual. I’m going to solve this for my own copy by covering it in plain brown paper and then decorating. (I wonder if I have tape in this apartment?)

I’m in love, recently, with the art project 20 x 200. Limited edition prints (beautiful quality) of arts of work for $20. Well, $28.50 once you add in the postage etc. Which, though it increases the price by almost 50 percent, doesn’t make it less of a bargain.

Early this afternoon, along with Paradise Lost, I read a book about deserts—another desolate landscape, so I suppose I could connect the two by more than their happening to dovetail in my reading. Terry Tempest Williams. I’ve long wanted to read more of her work. Perhaps in the summer. Though I was thinking, when I go away, I may just take something ancient with me. I’m thinking of following Kapuściński’s example and going with Herodotus. How very English Patient of me.

Oh, and some good news from home. I’ll have a couple of poems coming out in ALR soon. Lovely.

Rereading Anne Carson. I feel like I carried her so much with me for so long that I had to put her aside briefly—but returning to her. Returning to Decreation, which I only read the whole way through once. It’s such a pleasure.

Trying today to find the elusive David Gewanter. We said something about 1.30, but 1.30 and no Gewanter. Tried again an hour later—still no Gewanter. Maybe we’ll sit down to look at some of my poems tomorrow instead.

Have found a few art openings on over the weekend. Hopefully I will pop in to one or two of them.

Started thinking about Louise Brooks again this morning. Have been reading her essays, Lulu in Hollywood. I want to know if she wrote anything else. (I do plan to get a biography of her too.) It's such a shame that she destroyed the book she worked on for so long, Naked on my Goat - based on these pieces, it would have been well worth reading. I want to find the films of hers I haven't seen...

Kevin Rabalais was interviewed on Ramona Koval’s program recently. His first book, the novel The Landscape of Desire, was released by Scribe at the end of February. It’s already been getting wonderful reviews. Listen to the interview. Read the book. Support an exciting new writer. And, yes, he’s a friend of mine. I admire the seriousness that both he and his wife Jennifer Levasseur display regarding their writing.

Speaking of interviews, I may also be the subject of an interview soon. I’ll keep you posted if it’s happening.