You Suck, March

I had a moment this morning to reflect on the past few weeks. I haven't been feeling well lately, and I recalled that about a year ago I found myself cursing the month of March and the challenges it brought. I also recalled that I had quite a miserable March, 2007. Is it the time of year? Coincidence? Perhaps month names that are also verbs are destined to suck.

This month started off great as I rode the high of my MFA acceptance through a fantastic and carefree weekend with some friends. The day we got back, however, we had to tend to a sick Starbuck. Some non human entity had been leaving strange pukes around the house, so we isolated the chief culprit, Starbuck. We didn't catch her puking, but in two days she didn't do any eating or drinking either, so we took her to the vet.

It wasn't good. She'd lost half her weight, and had a condition that necessitated immediate care. Over the next few days we agonized on how much money to spend in search of what was wrong and then how much to fix it. There were many teary nights and harried vet trips. When all was said and done, we were able to care for her at home: she required feedings every 4 hours through a tube run through her neck, as well as several medications doled out through the day.







(Click here for more information on what was wrong with Starbuck)

For the next two weeks the Mistress and I traded off waking up at 4am to feed Starbuck. Feedings take about a half hour, all told, and by the time I would get back to bed I was too awake to fall asleep quickly. Our sleep debts quickly began to compound until the two of us looked like the walking dead. I'd stopped caring to trim my beard and mustache, and the stupid mistakes I was making at work began to garner attention.

Thankfully our efforts and attention paid off and Starbuck began to eat on her own. We could cut back her feedings in order to encourage her to eat more on her own, allowing us to catch up on precious sleep.

The increase in sleep allowed me to regain my mental prowess, which upon its return, began to focus solely on my wait to hear from the remainder of MFA programs I applied to. The two schools that accepted me, the nice one in Seattle and the nice one in Boston, have not offered me much in the way of funding. Nothing from the school in Seattle, and the one in Boston offered a Graduate Assistantship position which, generous though it is, would barely cover my living expenses. For either school I would be looking at student loans in the neighborhood of $45,000 dollars. This is more than the $20,000 debt limit I'd set in my mind, so I'd been counting on one of the other four schools I hadn't heard back from to give me a good offer.

In the mean time, on the small chance that I did choose to go to the school in Boston, I thought The Mistress and I might as well go to the open house to see what's what. That, and I've never been around Boston. This past weekend we dropped Starbuck off with mom and headed north. Raucous P. L. B. Filibuster and The Big E share an apartment in a neighborhood of Boston and were nice enough to let us crash at their place for the night.

Of course, we had a fantastic time in Boston, and I liked the school a great deal. It's made the decision much harder, and every day that goes by I wait nervously for word from one of the remaining schools. It's hard for me not to assume at this point, however, that I'm not getting any other offers. The decision I'm left with in that case is presently tearing me up.

I'm only considering the nice school in Boston, as it's given me a better offer financially than the nice school in Seattle. So what if I decide to go? For one, I get to spend the next three years focusing on my writing. The school offers classes in many genres and types of writing, and I think I might also like to take a class on writing for magazines. Oh, and there was one about writing for columns that I'd like to take. In addition, they have a very tough teaching course that is required if you want a Teaching Assistantship. Less than half those that take the course are actually awarded a position, and it's decided by an interview system. This sounds intimidating, but I respect it. I think it's more fair to the undergraduates being taught and to the new teachers than other schools who throw TAs into a freshman comp course with little preparation. Of course, I don't know if I'd like to teach, but it is the one field that I would be more qualified to work in post MFA than I am now. The pragmatic side of me is very excited about that.

Specifics aside, attending would mean three years of challenges that would push me to grow as a writer and as a person. I would have fun with some good friends, and enjoy living in a culturally rich city. When all is said and done, I might have a chance at chasing down some teaching opportunities, and maybe I'd open up some other writing opportunities that I hadn't planned on. I'd also, however, struggle to make ends meet while at the same time trying to give my writing it's due attention. That is, after all, the reason for going in the first place. Also, best case scenario, I find some teaching jobs that pay just about what I'm making now (not a lot) in a place I'd like to work. That, however, assumes a lot. Funding for liberal arts programs is waning and I presume will continue to do so so long as this economic crisis is in effect. Other than that, I wouldn't be qualified for anything more than I am now, (not much), so I'd have to find a job doing what I could, probably still making about what I do now or less. My increased loan payments would make it difficult to make ends meet, maybe impossible, and could prevent me from saving money or taking out a loan for a car or a house.

So what if I don't go? Well, first, I'd have to stave off the waves of depression as I think about all the fun and excitement I'd be missing. And then the waves of depression that will come as I realize I've got to either find a new job (doing what?) or suck it up and keep working at the job I have now, which feels like a prison sentence. I mentioned previously that it wouldn't be so bad to move away and start over, find a new job, a new place to live, but such a thing is much easier said than done. Especially nowadays. I dread that the truth may not be so, but I can only hope that somewhere, out there, there is a job that won't make me question whether I should wake up in the morning, and I am desperate to know what that job might be and how I can find it. Getting an MFA lets me explore one possible avenue while allowing me to enjoy life and learning for a few years before I again face that dilemma. However, it might make for a harder life down the road, and with the economy where it is, does that seem very prudent? But would it be worth it for the happiness and the personal growth?

This is the impasse at which I find myself, and I... we... are very much awaiting relief. All advice is welcome.

April, save us.

In Which I (Maybe) Get to the Point

In reading back over my posts, this month I have twice now compared favorably myself against Cylons, indicating that I have a plan. This makes me sad in two ways. One in that I have not yet finished what I started, which is explaining that plan, and two in that, c'mon, am I really that big of a nerd?

It's safe to say that, for the most part, the past two weeks were miserable. I'd been volunteered to work on someone's project at work and, being a perfectionist, I think I worked too hard on it. I took it to Atlanta with me, working on it every night in the hotel room. I've been stressing about it since mid March, but crunch time was these past two weeks. Between this project, an event I was working on, and my regular duties, I regularly came in early and left very, very late. Staying three and a half hours late after work is one thing. It's another when you usually get out at 11pm.

This weekend, even though I had to go in twice Sunday to take care of some events, felt like a vacation. No homework, no workwork to bring home. Saturday the Mistress and I went out to dinner in high fashion, treating ourselves to pricey Italian. Then we met up with some friends at another restaurant where we had dessert. For the first time in a long time I was able to indulge myself for a day, driving up to visit Stankfoot on Monday. We played video games, we hit Taco Bell, I held the ladder while he took down his Christmas lights. It was fantastic.

The following will only be funny to those following Galactica:
On our drive to Taco Bell, he turned to me and said in a mock school teacher tone: "So, what did you learn from this week's episode?"
"Um," I searched, "don't piss off Tory."
And then, with his hands cupped closed, he said "Very good. I want you to remember that as you take command..." He moved his hands toward me, opening them to reveal this:



For those not familiar with the show, he was mimicking a very touching scene from the series where father promoted son. He couldn't have done it better. Now that I think about it, that'd be a good way for two B*G nerds to propose to each other. It would have to be a private and serious moment:

"So, what do you think makes us work so well together?" A conversation of any length, as long as it's serious, introspective, and dramatically lit, should follow. Finally, the one who started should stand up, pull a jewelry box from a nearby dresser, desk, or table, and move to kneel, saying with as much throaty gravel as they can add to their voice, "good. I want you to remember that as you take command... of my heart."

Back on topic, though I'm sure reality will set in once I'm back behind my desk, it's fitting that I feel a reprieve from work at about this time when I'm thinking of how I would like to move on from it.

Class, though it's been frustrating, has done wonders for my poetry writing. In 2004, Mr. Templeton opened my eyes to the potential of verse. By 2005 I was writing like crazy, but by the end of spring I'd burnt out. I lost confidence in my ability, and distractions like "I'm unemployed and living at home all the sudden" didn't help me gain any perspective. Three years later, I'm feeling confident again. My writing has improved, though I was not notably active. I think it's because of a gain in perspective. My problem in 2005 was, looking back, I felt I'd run out of things to say. As prolific as I was in that short period of time, I'm not surprised. Though it doesn't feel like it some times, I've learned quite a bit these three years. Somehow, I've found a thing or two to right about.

It is clear to me that, though I don't know of any dream job, any path through life free of struggle, I would like to at least struggle for something that I enjoy, something that resonates with me. I've also learned that regardless of the method or the medium, I need to be creating to be happy. It's like a pressure valve. No, it's more than that. When I struggle for hours only to, in a flash, find the right word, the perfect turn of phrase, I'm filled with immense satisfaction. I am rarely more proud of myself, more accepting and forgiving of myself, then after I have made, and made well.

So, instead of crossing my fingers and hoping that through some convoluted series of miraculous and absurd events that I end up the as the new bassist for R.E.M., (sorry Mike, I'd have to), I decided I'm going to apply for creative writing programs with a focus on Poetry. This, of course, means a lot of work. I have to:

• Study for and take the GREs
• Read more poetry, become familiar with poets I'd like to study under
• Find programs that I like with poets I like who teach
• Weigh the benefits of an MA vs. an MFA,
  
• Consider where and if I'd pursue a PHD
• If applying for an MA, creating a sample of Critical Writing, something which I do not have strong experience in
• Revise my best poems for a portfolio
• Find journals I'd like to seek publication in
  
• Submit my best poems for publication in various journals
  

This is scary. This is considering moving away from places and people I love. This is moving to leave a job with steady pay and benefits to study a field with narrow options of employment upon graduation during unsteady economic times. I frequently have second thoughts, but what I have to remember is it's those second thoughts that will keep me here. If I were happy here, I wouldn't want to leave so desperately. No, it really was worse than you remember it last year, and no, it won't be better next year. I know this, but I have to remind myself regularly.

There you have it. My plan. I have about a year to make it happen.

Like Spinning Plates

I started taking a class. Last Tuesday. Advanced Poetry writing. I was fucking nervous. I haven't been in a class since the spring of 2005. I know the professor. I was in the first class he ever taught here, which happens to be the class that precedes this one in subject matter. Which was back in 2004. The class is six other students, all undergraduates, and myself. They startle me with their youth. Their smooth skin. Their bright, eager eyes. Their carefully planned first day of class clothing choices. I'm wearing my work clothes: a sweater so I don't look like ten pounds of crap stuffed in a five pound sack. Last time I saw my mother, she noticed that I had some gray hairs on my temple and in my beard.

Our first assignment: go to our library and find twenty journals that publish contemporary poetry, and read this fifteen page article “a few times” so we can “really talk it through.” After work, I'm on the couch reading my article, and I have a moment. This whole thing feels odd. I haven't had homework in years, since I was a full time student, and with its duty and obligation come a litany of flashbacks that crash against my current surroundings. I am suddenly hyper-aware of all around me. My feet tucked into an old blanket. The napkin in my lap holding a half peeled, half eaten Clementine. The cat, ever peering from just beyond the edge of my paper. I finish my orange and decide to make some tea. Leaning against the kitchen counter, kettle warming to my left, my homework in my hand, I wonder to myself: is this what being an adult is? Dishes in the sink, tea and oranges on the couch? Bills clipped above the doorway and kitty litter to be scooped? Car payments, loans, utilities, and eight to five?

It's Thursday and I'm in class again. I ran to the library after dinner Wednesday night and lurked around the stacks in the basement, opening journal after journal and keeping a list on paper of what I found. I look around the table and every other student has typed their list up, their names and the date at the top of the paper. I feel a flash of foolishness, though I know this isn't the type of class where we'd be asked to hand this list in. I know he asked us to do this just so we'd get a sense of what our library had, what our resources were, and where to find them. We each read through our lists. Apparently, most of my classmates searched for their journals on-line. Our assignment for next Tuesday: find twenty journals in the library and to hold them in our hands.

We come to discussion of the article. It was a speech by former poet laureate Mark Strand in which he attempts to defend poetry. He starts by creating a fictional account of his attempt to write the very speech his giving, where he has a series of encounters with a student and his girlfriend. They ask him questions pertaining to the speech and poetry in general. To each he replies with an eloquent response that speaks to a certain aspect of poetry, but to each response he backs off, reflects, and determines that, to a degree, he is full of shit. The speech continues with this pattern until he decides, at the end, it is best not to give it at all.

Of course, this is meant to be cheeky and clever. People like cheeky and clever speeches. It wasn't until I read the article a second time, wrote out each argument and his reason for discounting it, that I realized that the structure of his speech was also the point: poetry attempts all these things, but is not any of them wholly. Poetry is about coming as close as you can to encapsulating an experience, whatever it may be, but it never fully recreates it. There is always a gap, a layer of mystery. And just like any abstraction will fail to capture an experience, any attempt at defining poetry will suffer the same fate.

I looked around the table again. Everyone had their articles out, and everyone's article was pristine. I was the only person at the table with my notebook out, which was full of summaries, arrows, connecting lines, and ideas, jotted in four colors. “What did you all think of this article?” Prolonged silence. At the end of the table a young lady speaks up: “I didn't like the end.”

“What about it didn't you like?”

“I don't know. How it ended like that. I didn't like that.”


There is a small panic in the other student's eyes. A furrowed brow an a pout when the professor disagrees with them. A beaming that occurs when he does. I realize that it's all on the line for them. This is what they are: students. Is this how we're different? This is their identity, and they need to succeed. If they don't, they fail more than their class. Here I am, strolling in, doing my homework before and after work, between cooking and cleaning, from the quiet comfort of my house. I could drop this class tomorrow, and if I do, so what? I still eat. I still work. I am no longer expected to succeed, and no one will come down on me. I won't come down on me. I have nothing to lose, I have nothing to fear. They have no idea what life outside of college will be like, but they know that it depends on everything they do now.

I remember what that was like. It's terrifying. It's overpowering. But it's not mine anymore. And I don't belong here. I can see how every question, every statement the professor makes, is designed to elicit a train of thought. Formed to gently massage out a response. Baby steps. I get it, and though it's entertaining to watch, it's uncomfortable. I am between two worlds here. From nine to eleven, Tuesday and Thursday, I will be an undergraduate student. From two to eleven I will be a young student affairs professional, and I don't belong there either. I see through the bullshit. I am put off by the constant dishonesty, the self serving political jockeying. I refuse to pray on the altar of my resume, and for that I will only watch others step over, pass by, as I struggle in the same position.

Maybe that's naive. Maybe I'm not so different than my class mates, only further along the curve. I've been there, and though the material may be new, the methods boring now. Maybe in ten years I'll be able to look back on this entry, on my take of home and work, and I'll see how immature I was, how much I had to learn. Still, the feeling remains. I don't belong here. I am no longer a college student. I am not a professional. I just live in limbo, playing the role of both.

I saw one of my work study students at the library the other day. He was quite unsettled. He didn't recognize me in “normal clothes.”

Impulse Buys, Gift Envy

Tomorrow is Dark Mistress Hawthorne's Birthday, and this morning I needed to run to the store to get one of her gifts. Unfortunately I slept late, which meant I had to scramble to get a plan together so I could make the store and make it home in time to make it to work.

I'm usually fairly immune to impulse buying, but occasionally the constant repression of my consumerist instincts results in a momentary lack of thriftiness. Today it took the form in a cat toy,

a poster frame,

and candy canes!


I know that Tarantino posters are so undergrad, but... fuck you, doubting internal monologue.

On a related note, my presents for D. M. H. are truly awful. I will let you know what they were later (she might be listening). Seriously, this is just about the worst birthday gift I think I've given. It wasn't so much a lack of time, but a lack of mental energy and clarity that left me in a lurch. I must redeem myself at Christmas.

A few questions remain: is mentioning this a calculated attempt at mitigating my girlfriend's expectations while garnering a modicum of sympathy? Perhaps. Will she still be my girlfriend come Friday? Probably. Will I try harder next time? Yeah, I think so. Will Starbuck help me wrap the presents? If by help, you mean be a colossal but cute pain in the ass, then definitely.