travel plans March 31, 2008

If I had a corner office and more time on my hands at work to mess around on the computer, I’d Photoshop a picture of my head onto the side of a small airplane to illustrate that I’m leaving one place to visit another like they do with the contestants on America’s Next Top Model. OH THAT’S HOW THEY GET FROM POINT A TO POINT B? AHA! I know, this blog really needs some more visual explanation.

I booked my flights for New York City for April 12-April 14. I’ve been playing phone tag with the Sarah Lawrence graduate office so that we can set up an appointment for my campus tour. I’m sure the staff up there is standing around their answering machine right now over coffee and bagels, chuckling over my messages on speaker phone. My Southern accent always kicks into high gear whenever I’m nervous, sweet-talkin’, and leaving messages for people I don’t know. Hiii, this ii^iis Eee^eeemmillyyyy cawwwling from Chaawwwrlawwttte, North Caaeeaarroliiinaaa….

Anyway, I’ll be in the city if you care/dare to meet and/or guide this boondoggler around. Fortunately, I’ll be staying with international news reporter and friend Gillian who will give me a primer on navigation – that is, if I can make it to her Manhattan apartment from JFK. But if I can do Paris, London, and Chicago, I sure as hell better make it through New York.

But before all this, Scott and I are going to drive up to Richmond late on Saturday (April 5), spend the night in a hotel, and drive back late Sunday. We’ve got a few pals up there with Plan 9, but the rest will be up to our curiosity. I won’t be able to tour the VCU campus or meet the director; I’ll just be getting a feel for the place. And I’ve started hearing back from students I’ve emailed so we may bump into one or two of them along the way. But we’re really just excited about having an impromptu mini-vacation, and using the hotel room to catch up on all the crime TV we missed since the cable cord was gnawed through about a month ago. (to be cont.)

what’s behind door number 3? March 27, 2008

I’m accepted at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA now! Why did they have to email me when I’m at work already hungover and unable to focus?! The email was “signed” by David Wojahn. HOW COOL IS THAT. It said I’m on a waitlist for a TAship. That’s also very good.

Oh vey guys I don’t know what I’m going to do now! VCU is a really awesome program and instead of 2 years it’s 3. They also have a SUMMER IN GLASGOW opportunity in addition to working on the online lit mag Blackbird!

At this point I’m pretty sure that I’m going to turn down U of Missouri-St. Louis. It just doesn’t compare to my newer options for school. Plus, I got some bad vibes from the students I talked to there.  

I’ll have to look at all the costs but I’m pretty sure it would be cheaper to go to VCU and live in Richmond for three years than to go to SLC and live in NYC for two years. But NYC vs. Richmond? I don’t know! Part of me thinks I owe it to myself to take the bigger risk/life change. Part of me thinks it would be stupid to go the more expensive/daring route. And these are just the initial thoughts! Still so much more to think about! ACK. But gosh I feel so lucky right now. Things are really happening!

I am trying to operate like a normal human being March 25, 2008

Back to work after the weekend of good news and partying has been one slow, tough journey. Spreadsheets are blurry to my googly eyes, and I search 5 websites for every 1 task I complete. It’s only Tuesday.

Yesterday I was invited to speak for the second time to an advanced feature writing class at UNCC. The students this semester were not nearly as interested/interesting as they were the last semester, which doesn’t help when I’m standing up there rambling about how I don’t have any idea how I came to this point in my life, but here is maybe how you can get here. My face was red the entire time per usual, even though I stripped down to a T-shirt on a 55-degree weather day. A few eager Beavers in the class talked to me afterward about music journalism and marketing and writing for money. One sweet girl begged with her eyes on how to be a creative writer full-time. I don’t know? I told her I wished I could tell her she could get a job at a newspaper and find fulfillment that way, but I wasn’t sure since no one is hiring and I left that position with things burning. I wish I had told her NO YOU CAN’T but what you should do is just get a job that has the most to do with writing without having anything to do with writing so you can come home and write comfortably because you haven’t written anything all day. But I’m trying not to crush souls, you know? The rest of the class, on the other hand, were PR majors so I’m sure they’ll be just fine lying to the public on a regular basis. They were checking their emails and texting while I talked anyway.

I’m looking at plane tickets to go to NY and visit SLC on April 11-13. My friend Lindsey, an alumnus of the MFA program, said she wants to go visit with me but I’m waiting to get the OK from her before I order my ticket(s). Tickets to Newburgh via Skybus in Greensboro are ONLY $150-$170 ROUND TRIP (plus cost of gas/bus) so if someone else wants to tour with me raise your hand!

I received my rejection – via email – from UNCW yesterday. I know a few UNCW folk lurk here so I’m sorry to say that I won’t be joining you in the Publishing Lab. It really was one of my top choices for a while there.

So now we’re down to UNCG, VCU and UVA for answers. Anyone, anyone? I like to imagine they’ve taken my manuscript on vacation and are getting a foot massage while sipping umbrella drinks on the beach. One of them is absolutely blinded by the glare from the paper reflecting the sun that she can’t even read the middle stanza on page 8. The other professor leans over from his beach chair to give her some lotion. The squirt lands right in the middle of my poem, and she uses the extra off the paper to cover a mole on her left knee, thereby saving herself from harmful UV rays destined to start skin cancer on that very spot. She sits the stack of paper down for a second to squirt some more lime in her drink when my poems blow away with a gust of wind and land somewhere in the mid Atlantic, giving a lost Haitian refugee on a deflating raft the last, final opportunity he will ever have to hold a piece of literature in his dry, salt scrubbed hands. The end.

this is it! March 22, 2008

Mind-blowing news! I found out yesterday that I am accepted at Sarah Lawrence and through a combination of Federal aid/loans and SLC gift money, I have a full year’s tuition + half of the other year paid for!

Sorry, I would have posted this here yesterday but as you can imagine I had to call everyone in my phone book and scream into their ears and then proceed to drink myself into another form of complete bliss. I thought my head would be clearer today, but all those white Russians are still leaving me completely spinning at the idea: I might be moving to New York City! Holy shit!

I got my rejection letter from Oregon today, which leaves the following left to clue me in: UNCG, UNCW, Virginia, & VCU. I’m pretty sure Virginia is out, and the remainding 3 would have to seriously bribe me with money and additional opportunities. But comparitively, Sarah Lawrence has everyone beat as far as faculty (they have about 12 poetry faculty) and guest writers (NYC, plus 2 annual festivals) and connections.

I have a pizza waiting for me in the other room so I will have to discuss all this a billion times over later! In the meantime, send any tips or advice about the school or city my way!

EEE!

quickie March 21, 2008

rejected from Indiana

fine then!

Bummer March 15, 2008

OK, so understand this comes on the tail-end of an acceptance so I can’t complain nor be disappointed too much, but today I got my rejection letter from Montana in the mail. It came in quite possibly the smallest envelope I’ve ever seen for a professional notice. I am bummed because Montana sounded like such a great program, small and intimate – and the people there are VERY nice. Not to mention, I really liked the idea of starting a clean slate on the polar opposite side of the country in a little town where I could bounce my voice off the sides of mountains a la The Sound of Music. But then again, that’s where a lot of my interest laid: in place. I can’t say that I felt I would be a perfect match for the poetry professors there; so ultimately this decision makes sense, with confidence in my work or not. I’m guessing I have more rejection letters coming, with small hope for maybe one more acceptance. It sounds like Oregon and Virginia have already notified their acceptances and waitlists, same could be said of Indiana although still a little blurry in the details there, and a couple acceptances have gone out for Sarah Lawrence, VCU, UNCG, and UNCW but I haven’t heard much on the end of waitlists or rejections for those schools. And some – such as UNCG and UNCW – have been pretty adament about not being done with decisions. All of this is heresay, though, from the blogs and forums. I haven’t had the guts to call and nag any of the programs. I’d rather sit tight and give them all the time they need before X-ing me out of the pile.

I’M IN! March 14, 2008

JUST GOT AN ACCEPTANCE EMAIL FROM UNIV. Of MISSOURI- ST. LOUIS!!!

questions March 13, 2008

Do you ever find someone who writes/paints/looks/(enter your art form here) like you – but you’ve never heard of them? (or you haven’t studied their work?) Or even had someone say, have you studied so-and-so because you sound a lot like them? Does it weird you out? I’ve had this happen A LOT in the past year.

Maybe I’ve been living under a rock for too long, and I’ve never had my hands in just one discipline long enough to cover all the bases. I started writing poetry only a few years ago, and even after I started writing it took me a while to realize, HEY you should READ MORE POETRY. (duh!) So now that I read more (continuously catching up), I’m finding which camp I’m in (but let’s not get too segregated) and then finding people who either have strong similarities in subject matter or strong similarities in style to the way I’ve been writing. Yet it’s all new to me.

I believe that we all have a subconscious where things get dumped in and at some point it all comes together like Fright Night and that’s how we make wonderful casseroles. But don’t you have to already have the food in your fridge for this to happen? What if you never picked up celery at the grocery store but someone eats your casserole and swears that it has celery in it? This analogy is falling apart so I’ll just put it this way… 

I can’t figure out if this is a good thing – that my instincts are putting me in the same boat as other people (respected, talented, accomplished people,) and that maybe we’re all onto something – or that this is a bad thing, as in I shouldn’t be in this boat, or that people will think that I purposely tried to copy these people even though I’ve never heard of them before, or that it’s all been said and done and GET OUT. And then I’m like, OK, should I start taking in what they are doing and learn from it? or should I stay as far away from it as I can so I can continue to follow my natural discourse? Or should I study them until I can make myself different? I don’t know. I’m even too embarrassed to name names. And I should say that I rarely try to write like anyone, and usually my favorite writers have a very different style or context than my own. I just write, and try to follow universal or instinctual rules of thumb about craft, and come out with what I’ve got.

Meme Time March 12, 2008

I’ve been memed, so here we go!

1.  I can’t believe I’ve never…Quit a job without having another job waiting for me. Add to that list: road trip across the country, gone missing for longer than 24 hours, plotted any super secret missions.
2. Every time I think about…I still cringe. That time (only a few months ago) I thought a coworker was trying to steal my purse from a bench outside my stall in the bathroom and I swung the door open with my pants down and said “Excuuuuuuuseee meeeee!?!” Only to find out that she was just…sitting her purse right next to mine. HEH.
3. I wish I’d…when I had the chance.  Turned down the freelancer contract my previous employer offered me when I quit the job so I’d have spent more time in the past year doing writing I actually cared about. But now I’m addicted to that paycheck so it’s going to take moving states for me to quit it.
4. I’ve never felt so out of place as when I…Wore neon pink fishnet tights to try to fit in and check out the punk scene in Camden. This Johnny Rotten looking guy on the sidewalk with his friends saw me coming and started mouthing the Pink Panther song at me as I walked by with scared American tourist eyes.  
5. …is my guiltiest pleasure.  Double chocolate covered peanuts. I can eat a pound of them over the course of a few hours. Just. Can’t. Stop.
6. I hope…knows how grateful I am for….  All my friends in Charlotte because they have been my family and highly underpaid psychologists.  
7. In my darkest hours, I secretly blame…for my dysfunction.  I don’t like the whole blame game but sometimes I’m convinced that I picked up the paranoia gene that runs through one side of my family. It’s not a harmful gene, it just makes you do silly things (see #2).
8. …changed my life forever. Going to college 6 hours away from home. I’d like to say growing up with 4 parents and a sister with the same name but they never really convinced me to live life on my own. College was my middle school, high school, and post high school experiences all rolled up in one. I found poetry there, I branched out, I became political, and I opened my mind and heart like a coconut. For the first time in my life I felt smart and independent and that I could do almost anything if I just tried harder instead of sliding by at the midline. Cue the horns!  I’M GOING TO MAKE IT AFTER ALLLLLLL

Tagged: Slurredpress, Sauce On The Side, The Eye Of The Day, Dead Beat Odyssey and Escape to New York.

the wheel is turning March 7, 2008

I got my first MFA letter yesterday – rejection from Iowa. Not all that surprised, not at all hurt. If I had gotten in, it would have been the biggest monkey wrench to the whole process. I am terrified of tornadoes and I have had no real desire to move to Iowa City. I would have probably turned into a Van Gogh character in all those corn fields, running around without an ear and writing sad letters asking for more paint.

But now that I’ve received the first letter, I know the rest will be coming soon. And like an idiot I left my cell phone at home today so I can’t even use that comfort to tie me over until I can check the mail. People are already saying they’re getting phone calls and letters THIS MORNING from other schools I applied to. Have I mentioned that this is all insane? I bet my new tag cloud consists of: crazy, insane, madness, MFA, poetry.

To calm me, I thankfully have my other best friend from childhood coming to visit me this weekend. Maureen. I also found great comfort in taking a walk yesterday with an R.E.M. live album on full blast. (iPod) I walked past a dead squirrel in the road. He looked peaceful, and I couldn’t find where he was wounded. His eyes were open. Dead things with eyes open are easier to look at than dead things with eyes closed.

This weekend I’m going to call a number I picked up from a flier for a Hemingway cat someone has to give away. Last night I dreamed I was saving a litter of kittens from rattlesnakes. All the cats were in a basket of rattle snakes and I was carefully removing them before each strike. All the cats were black and gray. I woke up with lion mane hair. This happens often.