I AM LUCKY ENOUGH to have become good friends here at graduate school with a bonified Jane Austen nerd. (Hello, former English majors!) When I am a mess over school or weepy about love sagas, this friend of mine always listens to my gripes and then pauses thoughtfully, before saying something to the effect of: “It sounds like you need some more Jane in your life.” (Yes, this is her proposed remedy for everything.)

At first I was dubious. You see, I fancy myself as more of a pomo, contemporary, weirder-the-better fiction nerd. So I figured these stuffy novels of old couldn’t possibly hold transcendent healing powers. But I am here to confess to you, readers, that I couldn’t have been more wrong.

It’s been years since I read any Austen novels, and I had forgotten how damn good the stories are: witty banter, financial strife, smart women, lost love, sprawling countrysides, compassionate sisters who write letters to each other, near-death illness, brutish (and occasionally tender) men. Really, what more do you need?

And all this is particularly poignant now, as Sense and Sensibility, Austen’s very first novel, which she published under the psudonym “A Lady,” is now 200 years old. Frankly, I can’t believe it. The pathos of the story, though clothed in all those bonnets and cleavage-clad empire waists, is so strangely contemporary.

If you’re feeling lazy (like me) about reading the book, might I recommend the 1995 movie version (which basically contains the entire cast of Harry Potter plus Kate Winslet with a Jheri curl). It’s fantastic!

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IT’S PROBABLY NO NEWS to you that I have been M.I.A. on the blog scene as of late (like, seriously late). As some of you know, I’m in grad school right now. And all semester I’ve been getting my butt kicked by school work and stress-induced skin rashes (don’t ask) and teaching work. The good news is: it’s almost the end of the semester! So with this post, I’m officially back on the blog scene and I promise not to abandon you fine readers again. (Cross my heart.) What better to kick off my return than with the cutest tiniest horse ever (the latest in my “If I Were the Stork” series)? My thoughts exactly…

(photo by Jim Cole)

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FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING, THAT IS. I’m one week deep in graduate school, and I already have manuscripts up to my knees! While I’m getting my fiction bearings down here in North Carolina, why don’t you have a look at some of my past fiction writings that have been featured on TSP. Like “On the Care and Feeding of Animals” a story about young sisters, which I posted back in January, and “About the Weather Though,” a piece on a fictional community’s struggle to deal with the war in Iraq. Or if memoir’s more your thing, read “Picking at Scabs,” my look back on the trials of adolescence. I’ll have more prose to share soon, but in the meantime…enjoy!

(Photo of the Icelandic horses at Robert Woods Farm)

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WHY IS IT THAT BROTHERS are not very good  on the phone? (Need I remind you of this.) Anyway, all these long-distance calls are making me miss my big bro.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

YOU KNOW I LIKE to dance (see my obsession with le tektonik and my Solange envy for further evidence). And now that I’ve been accepted into Brooklyn College’s MFA program (and Emerson, too!), I can’t stop busting moves all over the place. Like this guy (Ely Kim). Even if I don’t end up going to either place, it feels nice just to be wanted.

I think #80 might be my favorite. Anyone else?

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