The Lion, the Witch, and the Shakes

Lately, I have been trying to get back into a routine. It's hard to find one when you change your whole life around. I have a new S.O., a new city, new jobs, and a new house. That's right. . . a new house!

Actually it's an old house. An old lady died, and we got a great deal. Only the dog sees ghosts, so it's ok.

Poetry:
Since I've been here, I have introduced a lot of people to Tao Lin and Amanda Nadelberg. I like them both, and everyone else likes them, too. People around here are very artistically minded and musical. There are so many theater-type things around here that I can't keep up, and live music is all over the place, but they don't know much about the contemporary poetry scene.

I put all the poetry books I have, most of them, at the Darjeeling cafe, which is in an old schoolhouse. I'm calling it the poetry library of Virginia. People come by and look at it all the time. A couple books have gone missing even. But the mission is to expose people to the fact that people are writing incredible poetry today that tears down their expectations. If a couple books go MIA, that's all right.

Berkeley?:
After about two weeks of being here, I found a guy named Jamba Dunn and his wife Erin. They are very cool people. He's has an MFA from Naropa, and she is a painter. Both went to Berkeley.

Jamba and Erin invited MBH and me to their house for dinner. They made an incredible vegan meal. Their house gave me house envy, but they pay a lot more than we do for their house. They have a nice porch and nice wood door frames and more stuff than we do. Dante, the guy who restored the house, was there. He lives in Baltimore. He went to Berkeley. We talked about The Wire. MBH was the only person in the room without a college degree--the only one who didn't go to Berkeley.

The next day she met with college profs and admins to take the 3(!) classes she needs to finish. She'll have a degree before EOY.

I keep meeting people here that went to Berkeley. It's weird.

Shakespeare:
The American Shakespeare Center is treating me well. I like the job, and I feel like I'm contributing a lot. That's good.

Recently, a dude named Casey came into the Darjeeling Cafe and said he wants to have a monologue slam there. MBH and I were like, wtf, we've been talking about that. It will happen soon, and it will be awesome. Casey is from Austin. He has hosted slams before. I am not a big slam person, but I am a big poetry person, so that's good.