notes on Gravity & Light

Refraction. Water slows your pull to the ground, stretches and displaces the light. A dense medium through which to travel. Photons stumble into a wide gait, and sound slows to feel the cool salt of the water.

And you think about how bodies pull toward each other. How massive bodies pull harder. Unmissable. They mold themselves from a hot mess of cosmos. Wet fire drawn to its likeness, pressed together and spun about in chaos. The slow cool of this, of becoming one body. Of rounding out and getting caught between forces. The wobbling knee of a newborn calf.

Big Changes

This post is deeply personal and long overdue. News for many dear friends of mine who for whatever reason I haven’t had a chance to catch up with in a while. What brings on this occasion? Nothing in particular, maybe the coffee I had this morning (whoa! I can handle coffee again!), or maybe that I’m procrastinating on things I ought to do this week. So here’s the news:

I’m going through a divorce right now.

It’s really not so bad. I mean, it’s awful and stressful and unstable but it’s also great and freeing and necessary. I started couch surfing in April, which has given me the chance to reconnect with friends and family. I have many great people supporting me in many different ways. And I’m forming myself as an individual. There are many things in my life I need to work out, and I’m excited.

If you want to talk more, let me know. I am totally willing to talk about stuff, I just don’t want to dump it all onto my blog.

On the poetry end of this news: I’m also going to take on a pseudonym for publishing purposes. I always rolled my eyes at that when I was an editor but I think I understand why some people do it now. I don’t want to keep my married name (though it’s a shame since I’ve already published a few works under it and my college folks know me by it). Name is a big part of identity, especially as a writer or artist. My family name is Knopp, which is easy to confuse with Nobb or Knopf–a major publishing company. Go ahead, try typing “Knopp poetry” into Google and see what it suggests.

So it seems I have a chance to form my own identity. I think I’m going to start publishing as Abi Nighthill. Here’s how I came up with this one:

My mom’s family name is Horton, which means hill.

My dad’s family name is Knopp, which means button, but can occasionally mean hill.

And as for Night? The night sky has always held great meaning for me. The stars, the deep, all that. I’ve loved the night sky since I watched meteor showers in the backyard as a kid. I’ve spent long gazes on it no matter where I’ve lived. Photos of space have changed my life in very personal ways. In Chicago, I once came home crying because I couldn’t see the stars due to the city lights.

Also, it’s easy to pronounce/remember and it does well on the search engine end of things.

Anyway, what do you think: Fitting? Too sweet? Just right?

Encounter with a Heron

Today was lovely.

Went to a café and played a comics jam game N is working on, walked around St. John’s with A & G, then picked up my bus pass from UP.

I decided to walk from my bus stop downtown back to the Funker (getting my intake of vitamin D, and exercising my hurt leg a little), and wandered through Tanner Springs Park.

A heron was hanging out in the springs, so I stalked it for a long enough to make a few sketches. Then I filled in the space with writing (as I’ve started doing). Felt a little like G.M. Hopkins, hunting poetry out of nature. I also felt a little like David Attenborough, sneaking up on nature and hanging out with it.

Rotates its body as it walks slowly away. Keeps its head just slightly turned, watches me as it walks slowly away. Leaves me as I approached it: indirectly. When I act as if I have lost interest, it slowly returns, observes me just the same. Watches me from the back of its head as it hunts. At some point, plunges its beak into the water and comes back, stretches its neck out and swallows. It watches me still through the marsh grass. Let me walk over indirectly, sit a couple feet away.

After a good stare-down, hopped onto the path with soggy toes and slowly crossed in front of me. Tried to disappear back into the grass. Watched me. Waded back into the water. Others took notice.

The heron watches me still. As curious as I? Watches me through the grass as I leave.

I came home to find D practicing with his bluegrass band, and I ate the last of the bland falafel I made last week. Dinner and a show!

Tomorrow I meet with the Chiron Studies folks at PSU to discuss teaching a course this winter. I could either pick up my friend J’s class, Games as Literature/Text as Play, or propose and run my own course. I had thought of proposing a course on Appropriation that covers questions of authorship and intellectual property, but may instead do a Science Poetics course in the style of Columbia’s craft seminars (a hybrid of lit, poetics, and craft). I may propose both and teach whichever one makes the cut! I’ll know a little more tomorrow, I am sure.

Mailing My Own Spit

I signed up for Patients Like Me a little while back at a friend’s suggestion. I haven’t really used the site much, except to record when I stopped my ulcerative colitis treatment due to a reaction to the sulfasalazine. I’ve tried to watch my diet and keep stress low, which is working just as well if not better than my medicine was working.

So since I signed up for PLM, I got an offer from Pathway Genetics to get my genes checked out provided I complete some surveys for a study. I think they’re trying to know more about why people ask for genetic testing, and what patients do with that information.

I signed a form that read like something out of Gattaca, and completed a survey about my personal health history as well as my expectations about the testing. Today I sent my spit back to them in a vial, so I should get results back in a couple of months.

They’ll run three reports for me: one with information about my response to drugs, one with information about health conditions I may be genetically predisposed to, and one with information about what genes I could potentially pass to any offspring.

Should be pretty interesting.

Abandon

Game Chef 2012!

Check out this game I’m writing (as submitted to Game Chef 2012)!

It’s certainly not finished yet, but it is playable if you can interpret my lofty poetic ramblings.

To Travel These Pathways

If you do play it (even if you break the rules by playing it on the wrong night. . .) let me know how it goes. In fact, let me know what you think upon reading it too.

Intrigued? Ask me for a bibliography. I intend to make one.

In Protest of SOPA/PIPA: A Little Friendly Vandalism

I just devised a little prank that may be used to further awareness of SOPA/PIPA. (Nevermind my er, future plans for this).

1. Upload several plain black images to Facebook.

2. Tag ‘em. Any tagged friends-except those with (understandably) high privacy settings–will get a”censored” photo on their profile page album.

3. BONUS POINTS Caption the photo to explain why it was censored. Maybe one of you was wearing a mickey mouse shirt. Maybe you were watching a music video. Maybe you’re at Disneyland.*

*Why all the Disney hate? Google the Copyright Term Extension Act sometime.