the things we do for rejection

This is the third year in a row that Thanksgiving and three to four fellowship application deadlines have coincided, and the third year in a row that, though I knew this in advance --- wasn't that also me who, weeks ago, meekly sallied forth on the hated steed of "Hi, I was wondering if you could send out a 3,000,001th recommendation for me? In an act of futility? And maybe hatred for this world?" --- it seemed to creep up on me in an unpleasant way.

The past two years I have spent post-Thanksgiving days in my parents' house, furiously ransacking them for computer paper, manila envelopes. Then I have begged rides from brothers, parents, anyone around, to a nearby Kinko's so I could photocopy a bajillion copies of stories about vomit, sea whales, and empanadas. Usually my dad gets in on the action, fixing the printer and saying "Hm" with warranted dubiousness when I describe the story I am sending as my representative. By the time I get to the post office it is barely the day of the deadline postmark anymore. All this is because I am super organized.

Tomorrow I depart for Ohio (via a mysterious layover in the Chicago area, where I expect to be mown down by other travelers and then baked into a pizza). In addition to having my apartment in order, I decided I would try to get some of these fellowship applications ready. But besides the notable hurdle of having to photocopy everything in the known world to apply to these things, in some cases even your own buttocks, there are other hurdles that are difficult to overcome this year, such as:

1) A ten-page writing sample limit. I know there are very remarkable writers out there who write very remarkable ten-page stories, but I am not one of these remarkable writers, which therefore means

2) Shamelessly fucking with margins and fonts, a practice I have not employed since probably high school, but with which I am nonetheless familiar via the intense and often masterful wheedlings of my own students. Still, even with the font-fucking, the stories I submitted in recent years weren't good enough to get me said fellowships, so obviously I need to submit something different, which means

3) Sending out a story that has just been finished, and very likely could be a terrible story that should not have been shown to anyone, even to prisoners in a special study where they are shown stories that make them go insane with dislike, boredom, or a sense of despair, and in fact this story, if shown to said prisoners, might really go ahead and kill them, and then where would you be? In prison, that's where. You'd be in prison. For murder. Nice going.

With all of my efforts I only managed to get one application --- the one with the most photocopying, mind you --- in the mail. The apartment is still a shambles, I am utterly unpacked. Sometimes it is truly mystifying, the things we do for rejection.

we been played

This morning I headed out to the doctor's office. It was raining a little --- just that fey San Francisco rain that sometimes comes, more of a spittle than real precipitation, just enough to ruin your hair. I had my trusty hole-in-the-top Walgreens umbrella. (Life just hasn't been the same since I lost The Duck on BART.) About four blocks in to my walk, it began to pour. Obviously this was no problem, since I had my umbrella, plus a functioning liver. Everyone knows that if you have an umbrella and a liver, pouring rain is no thing.

Moments later, however, my pants, socks, shoes, and a small selection of my head were soaked all the way through, and I had fallen gracefully, headfirst, into a curb puddle the size of Ryan Seacrest's ego. No problem, I told my body. You have a liver, remember? Whereupon --- maybe it was the word "remember" --- it also remembered that it was pumped full of Tysabri and had no immune system, and my lymph nodes and throat began to swell to the point where it was difficult to breathe.

So what did I do, being the savvy, classy broad-about-town that I am? I crawled (that's right, crawled) into an alleyway and waited for the rain to stop. Did I miss my appointment? Yes, I did. Did I get home? Yes, eventually. I got home by walking between alleys and then resting in alleys. When I got home, my fever was 104.2.

Now, see, this is what annoys me about chronic illness. It's such a player. One minute it's like, Baby, you the world to me, girl. We good. The next minute it's like, Oh, hi, you thought you were getting better? Yeah, I'd slam facefirst into a puddle and huddle in a city alleyway before we make any rash decisions. Plus, I'm boning Jeannette.

No more outings for me today. Although, the view out the window now reports that the rain has stopped. Of course it has.

getting ahead of myself

I never thought I'd say this, but um (cough) thanks, Tysabri.

After my tests and infusion earlier this week, which involved an exploded vein, an overnight IV, and being tied down by the neck and placed into a radioactive tube (paging Aldous Huxley!), it has been determined that I do not have the additional autoimmune disease I was suspected to have; that indeed the bile ducts of my liver are not slowly experiencing a fibrosis that will later cause me to have a liver transplant; that in this case fiction and reality are staying well away from each other, which is fine by me. My high times in the liver clinic have been just about enough after-the-fact recon for me to feel good about the details of my transplant story.

And furthermore, after three Tysabri infusions, it seems like maybe they are working. I'm not in remission yet but my inflammation markers are a lot better. Instead of being as anemic as a matador after an unfriendly bull run-in, I'm as anemic as a temporary high school vegetarian. Maybe --- just maybe, because let's not get all crazy here --- I can go back to work in 2010. What do you think, a little lesson planning, a little grading? Oh baby, grading never sounded so good.

good reading

Check out a great poem by a great poet, my friend Michelle Chan Brown, at The Missouri Review this week.

byoiv

weeeee doggies. one blown vein and a tysabri infusion later, your correspondent got sent home with the tube in. indeed, as others bring beverages, guests, casseroles to parties, i can now bring my own IV. i'm keeping it in for my liver procedure tomorrow. is this a good idea? me not know. me just writer, me keep it real. today at the hospital after my first iv blew, juan encouraged me to imagine bis'l, our crohn's dog, rolling in a pile of leaves. excuse the one-armed typing.

my arm itches. i would like to claw it apart but, see above, i will refrain. unfortunately i suspect that tomorrow's procedure will be an old crohn's favorite: the ye olde "hi, drink this! throw up! stick needles in! insert toxic dye! put you in a tube! hold your breath!" favored by radiologists round the world. all i ask is that i'll have continued use of my arm afterward, unlike in august. one day of one-armedness (today) is enough. bitch, i got shit to write.

and on that note: it's come to my attention that what's wanted on this site are anecdotes about men, bus scenes, things observed, that vein scenes are out of vogue. believe me, they're out of vogue with me too. back to other programming as soon as there's other programming to program.

she's an easy liver/(she'll get a hold on you, believe it)

1) I'm getting more liver tests. The people in the liver clinic are very thorough. They had no problem walking me through every possible scenario of what could be wrong with me, right up to the part where I get cirrhosis and need a transplant. But, they assured me, not in a scary way.*

2) I'm in love! Is something wrong with me? Is this going to show up on my next (seemingly weekly) MRI with arm-bursting contrast? I am in love with this man. He is dancing. He is singing Sisqo. Crohns, don't take your temperature now; it's so wrong, it has to be right.



*Note: On the sidelines of all this, in what I am trying to consider a completely non-creepy coincidence, I am sending out a story I first drafted three years ago, title "Transplant," which culminates in exactly what you would imagine. I would say this is life imitating art, but here I think we're going to have to settle with lifelike possibilities imitating another dubious story. "Art" it can hardly be called, as scores of people who have been subjected to it at readings can assure you. (At my reading in October, I looked up just in time to see one confused listener mouth to another, "WHAT?") I'm just wishing I hadn't done all that completely lifelike research where I learned about exactly what happens at every moment. In case you're wondering, it's gross. Incidentally, I think the next story I write is definitely going to feature someone winning the lottery, curing cancer, and then being energetically but sincerely seduced by the man in the above dance sequence. I mean, just in case I actually wield any power here. Maybe I'll also add a little epilogue where everyone who doesn't have eyebrows gets them! Because short stories can absolutely have epilogues all of a sudden.

what lacks in subtlety

This morning, attempting to work on my "novel" (can I take away the quotation marks after page 150?), I allowed my iTunes to express what it would by authorizing its "DJ" function. (Those quotation marks, unfortunately, are non-negotiable, since there are no disks involved and no person or thing is expressly jockeying them. Sorry --- once a devotee of the Chicago Manual of Style, always a devotee of the Chicago Manual of Style.) iTunes had a few things to say. It had to say:

1) Ladytron, "Destroy Everything You Touch," followed directly by
2) Justin Timberlake's "What Goes Around Comes Around," after which came
3) The Besnard Lake's "Disaster" and finally
4) Dolly Parton's "Jolene."

Seriously? Come now, iTunes "DJ." Somewhere in there someone, a gnome or rat, is tee-heeing its little heartlet out. I mean, "Jolene"? What my novel lacks in subtlety* iTunes "DJ" lacks in spades. Later on in the day, having moved on to other, less pressing subjects, it decided that the time was right for Datarock's "Nightflight to Uranus." A Crohn's joke, iTunes? If you're that lighthearted, be my guest.

Luckily for the "DJ" there's only a finite amount of music with which to jockey. I don't think there's anything about excessive consumption of pomegranates (possible song: "Get Them Seeds/Get Them"), four quick, almost jaunty vomits in a row ("And You Ain't Even Drunk, Girl") or a declaration at the doctor this morning that I think I may be losing my composure at large ("Jolene").

*I heard the market was undersaturated with ten-page reveries about the medicinal properties of Feverfew, so I went ahead and dropped one into the middle of chapter 3. See you at the rejection booth!