the last few days of mental freedom

I'm coming to the end of spring break. Depressing, utterly. Although, I have accomplished more than I thought I would over this past week. Wait, correction, over this past glorious week. I have as of now ( as of maybe twenty minutes ago) read 5 novels this week, pretended to work on a poster presentation for the NWSA conference for half and hour while drinking coffee, slept in until 2 pm at least once, and have done generally nothing that I haven't felt like doing. And I didn't even have to go out of the state to do it, as much as going out of the state appeals to the restless streak thats been progressively growing in me. Monday its back to the grind, back to fifteen credit hours, homework, papers, and being an absolute slave to academia in the worst kind of way. Its a bizarre slightly masochistic relationship. I hate how school sucks the life out of me but love the satisfaction of making Deans List at the end of the quarter. Truthfully though I cant wait to graduate.

Ive been rethinking my childhood goal of becoming a writer lately, which has been influenced in every way by rereading 5 Mary Russel novels (see the Laurie R. King link). A person can dream, right? Amazing books, Mary Russel is my new woman literary hero and takes her place beside Nancy Drew. I cant write fiction because I cant seem to swing conversation on the page. However, poetry is another thing. Granted, there is alot of bad poetry. I don't really show people what I write because I'm not all the way sure yet that its not bad poetry, not to be self deprecating, merely realistic. Having the very modest background in academic English lit. that I do, I know something about bad poetry. I find myself writing poetry in my mind almost constantly (strange and dangerous confession). Lately Ive been thinking about Whitman, Ginsberg, Harjo, and Tea. I'm not hip like Michelle Tea, I'm not gritty. But I'm not constantly elegant and earthy like Harjo, and I cant ramble without punctuation at some point like Whitman and Ginsberg. I feel like my poetic voice falls somewhere in between the points where all of those writers meet. And if you have no idea what that means you'll just have to go read them for yourself and find out.