Elevated Diction rises again!!

I'll be reading nano non-fiction this friday, in the 1104 S Wabash Film building elevators as part of Elevated Diction's run of Parents Weekend. I'm a little excited.

I don't know why it makes me feel awesome to read stories that are somewhere between five and ten seconds long to bewildered  Columbia elevator riders, but it gets really good somehow, at least when a parent looks at you, and then the elevator, and then you when the elevator door opens, and loudly claims, "THAT MAN DOES NOT KNOW HIS BIOLOGY."

Me: I'd love to read for Elevated Diction again. Let me know, I'll bring my nano-shorts!  

Dave: Dakota. Nano short. I think that describes how tall I was in 4th grade. 

Summer lit!

I am flying back to Chicago in just about two days...

After a month of gluten-free picnics, haphazard travels, spontaneous expensive book binges, countless couches with countless friendly strangers, and more hours of my life reading and writing than (cough) some people thought necessary--- I'll be coming back. 

Or, in a bit. I'll be missing The Printer's Row Ball, The Sunday Night Sex Show Anniversary Show, The Windy City Story Slam, and a slew of other literary events and festivals-- to take another break in Colorado for a reunion. I keep egging myself on that it's still possible to just skip getting to know my family members again and stay right where I belong in Illinois. That's advisable, right?

In any case, it's going to be a complete about-face for me in the next few months. No traveling, no picnics, no french conversation with foreign boys, but a whole lotta organizing. 

After over 12 hours walking, sitting in train stations in Marseille, Paris, Mannheim, and Munich, and a short time sitting on the front stoop of a house in Neubiberg while it rained and I sat on my copy of When You are Engulfed in Flames on top of the cement because I have tailbone comfort issues... I am back in Germany. Ready and willing to fly back in a few days now.

This started yesterday afternoon when I was in Marseille and realized there was either something wrong with the atm or my credit card or my life, and I had no cash left and no apparent way of getting more, and I got really, really creative to get out of the country without paying the TGV or the Deutsch Bahn an enormous amount of money for the overnight.

 I think I've had a couple hours of sleep. In twenty minute increments, with a sheet held over my head on the 1:12 am ICE train from Mannheim to Munich. Everyone else on the train leaned against the windows, put their heads down on the tables, or crouch sideways on their seats. I slouched down slightly and pulled my handmade batik sleeping sheet over my face, wondering if there is something oddly suspicious about hiding beneath a sheet for four-five hours. 

I  started working on my novel again. And when I was in Brussels a man told me, in french, (among things) that my fingers were magnificent, and all I could think about was that I needed to write a travel zine about the past couple of months entitled that. I got up and left and he pretended to cry, while claiming, "Je pluer! Je pluer!"

It's freezing right now. But it feels good, oddly, to stay still. Stay put. Stay constant.

I've been convinced there should be a gluten-free guide to vagabonding. Everywhere. More or less, there's always quite a bit -not- written for anyone with special needs and no special amount of money, but I can't help it. 

I've thought about writing it. I mean, I don't know what I'd call it. The special-diet vagabond? The punk with needs? The crust guide to traveling with Celiac's?

I think I'd have to go with the special-diet vagabond. Sdv for short. But I could-- can. It will be like Europe on a Shoestring, or Rough Guides, or even Rick Steve's Europe through the Backdoor-- but for punks with health concerns and no money. 

The rest of my friends will probably just smirk at me, and claim that clean kids get sick and die, but really, special diets have absolutely nothing to do with cleanliness. You can be a dirty punk with health concerns and no money, and still read a travel zine about eating good food abroad.

We'll see.

Manifest and Elevated Diction!

Because muzak has long been out of any resemblance of vogue, yours truly and a whole host of other SilverTongue writers will be doing readings this Friday at the 1104 S Wabash building during all Manifest events-- within elevators.

We coined a name for our kind of prose-- nano readings--otherwise known as short-short-short-short-shorts, and we'll be performing various versions of it, all day long. 

If you're on campus during Manifest, check us out.

impulses.

It took me a long time to think, suddenly, I need to make a blog with my real name. cough. (assumed) real name. New real name? Anyway, it's 12:16 am in the morning, I haven't gone to sleep, my roommate is beside me with her matching laptop on the couch in the middle of our kitchen (old roomie moved out, took all the furniture, and you know what, who cares?) and our stinky cat is asleep between us. 

I've been studying for a couple hours, coming up with terrible ideas for another few. In any case, I feel a special kind of need to post this;

darkly by myself
i cry mildly like
one whole cluster of ladies.

--which begins the first stanza of the last poem I told myself I would ever, ever write. Because I was 18 and I decided quitting something, that you liked so much, and were so, so angry at, really meant something. --I certainly haven't written any new poems. Intentionally.