Announcements May 9, 2008

First off, I have new real estate on the internet, and I will blogging primarily here now: http://emilyabenton.com

 

 

Yes, that’s my real name, and I’m sorry for keeping it hidden for the most part here. And I know it’s a real pain in the rear to edit your Blogroll or RSS feeds once more, but please, if you will, add that address to it. I’ve already added most of your links there. However, you don’t have to erase Reality Writes, as I may be back here from time to time (especially next fall…see below). But the other blog will now be my main locale. It’s slightly different, although a more cohesive version of my self(selves), I think.

 

I’ve spent the majority of Reality Writes talking about my MFA application experience, and I’m thankful to have had that outlet. Some of you may be relieved to find that my new blog will not include any of that. But for those who have been following, here’s my other major announcement:

 

I’m not going to school this fall.

 

I heard from the director at UNCG on Monday and he said they won’t have any openings for me to move up from the waiting list. They will, however, help me defer my application to next year so I can avoid resending paperwork and fees and already be, theoretically, at the top of the stack. The director also kindly offered to help me pick a list of other schools to apply to that will better match my portfolio and are more likely to give me funding.

 

I know some of you are scratching your heads as to why I have not taken one of my other acceptances, because they certainly were good ones - great ones, even. But I learned through gut instinct and long, hard (ow! It hurts!) thinking that they were not the right places for me. Some of the factors leading up to that decision include the lack of funding and an overall feeling that I would be too distracted or too isolated in the communities hosting these programs. On the other hand, when I visited UNCG, I felt overwhelmingly comfortable around the people I met there (for reasons of similarity and also diversity), with the low-pressure lifestyle of Greensboro, and also with what the funding situation would have been for me had I gotten off the waitlist. Had I not visited Greensboro, I could have very well ended up taking another offer and probably done OK in a program, although I think it would have been really hard for me to get by financially - or at least without a heavy burden and lots of stress - and I also don’t think I would have fully “fit in” with those programs. That isn’t to diss anyone at these schools - they certainly were welcoming and I’m grateful to everyone who gave me a glimpse into their MFA experience. It was only by comparison of those programs with UNCG’s that I gained a lot of perspective about what my needs were for an MFA - some things I couldn’t have known from merely filling out applications and researching websites, although I do think I put more time into that than most people.

 

I’ve run into many friends lately - the ones who’ve heard me decline offers to hang out because I was working on applications, or have heard my voice shakey with the excitement of the possibly studying with X writer at X school - and when I tell them my news, they tilt their heads and ask, “Are you OK?”

 

It’s a perfectly valid question to ask considering how passionate I’ve been about every step of this process, and how much I felt was at stake when I put those fat envelopes in the mail. But my answer is Yes, I’m OK. I don’t feel defeated. Maybe I would feel that way had I not been accepted anywhere. But considering the places that did accept me, I feel a little empowered. I know now that I am good enough to do this. I know that I can be competitive with my art, even though I’m young and not as experienced as many other writers out there. I know I have more choice in the process.

 

And although I’m not going to school this year, I’m left in a good place. I don’t hate my job; it gives me enough cushion to get by and not have a miserable life full of worry. (In other words, it’s not like I’m being kicked out of a dorm room without a clue what to do. I’ve been on my own for a few years now, and I’ve got this independence thing down.) I’ve also in the past month or so met some writers who are giving me the feedback and exchange I’ve needed. I can now workshop with them and warm up those muscles that were getting pretty tense and out of shape a year ago. I also lost my professional freelance blog, which at first was a slap in the face because I wasn’t expecting it to end so early, but I now see it as a “blessing in disguise,” to quote my mother. It’s the kick in the head I needed, and it’s freed up a lot of time in my schedule to work on poetry or other forms of writing. I’m going to focus now on spreading my byline wider, while also pushing myself to write poems I was saving for the MFA experience. (I know, that was a completely stupid way to approach my writing. But I was letting fear, recognition, and other commitments get the best of me.)

 

So, at this point, I will be applying for MFA programs again in the fall, but I’m going to take my time getting back to the paperwork. I spent way too much of last year obsessing over the details before the clock was even ticking to turn stuff in. Not to mention, I already have half of the work done, right? I may re-apply to a few schools, but there will be a lot of new players in this year. I’m certainly not going to settle for just applying to UNCG. I’m going to throw my net wider, but I also may not apply to as many places. I won’t have fallback schools. This round will be more of a poker game, rather than throwing paper at the wind.

 

So yeah, I’ll be coming back here to write about the whole MFA process again, because - and this is really important - I can’t talk about it on my other website. That means you can’t talk about it there either, and I’ll delete any comments that bring it up. The reason is that my boss and other coworkers may read that blog since it’s easier to find (by name) and I’m promoting it more, and I don’t want them to get the idea that I’m on my way out and fire me for it. And as far as I know, I could end up not going to school next year either, or dropping the whole plan to live a “normal” life without a graduate degree. So I don’t want to raise any red flags. Capiche?

 

But thank you for reading this incredibly self-indulgent blog post - and all of Reality Writes - and for reading my new website if you so choose to subject yourself to more me. I could try to leggo my ego and chill for a bit, but that wouldn’t be Reality, would it?

in case you’re wondering April 25, 2008

still no answers on the UNCG front. I did officially turn down VCU, though. And I’m assuming SLC knows I’m not going there since I didn’t send them a check by their deadline.

It’s weird to feel that after this whole process, even after getting some good acceptances, I may end up exactly where I started, just a few hundred dollars poorer. I guess a few hundred is better than a few thousand, though.

I packed an elaborate lunch for myself today that consists of venison taco meat, chopped romaine and red onion, light Daisy (sing the song) sour creme, and shredded cheddar cheese - all individually tupperwared. Yet I got in my head yesterday afternoon that it’s been almost two weeks since I had my last Showmars Greek salad, and once you get the idea of Greek food in your head, it’s impossible to remove it until you have it in your mouth. So against my better judgment, I might just save the taco salad for dinner and get out of the office for the Greek takeout. Because life is about making spontaneous Greek food decisions sometimes.

scene from Richmond April 7, 2008

Before scene opens, our two main characters, Emily and Scott, have just left a “party” where red wine was consumed with giggly MFA girls, and have been driving about 15 minutes down one long stretch of highway to reach their hotel that is on the outskirts of town. They’ve passed about 10 gas stations at this point, all of which were closed. It is about 12:30 a.m. on a Saturday.

Emily: “Look! That one’s open!”

Scott: “What? Where! Oh yeah - awesome!”

Emily turns wheel into parking lot, where two cop cars are surrounding another vehicle. They park, walk past a small diner full of teenagers, and enter the convenient store. They walk toward the neon sign reading “BEER” in the back of the store.

Emily: “What? Where’s all the cold ones?”

Scott: “It looks like they’re locked away.” - motions to closed “beer room,” and then starts pacing the aisles.

Emily: (looks through locked glass doors to beer room, everything is dark)

“I don’t understand.”

She follows Scott to the juice aisle, and then turns around and crosses paths with pixie-looking girl and lip ring boy with long hair

Emily: “Excuse me, we’re from out of town. Can you help me?”

*blank faces*

Emily: “Is there some sort of law here about buying beer at night?”

Pixie Girl: “Yeah, you can’t buy beer after midnight.”

Scott: “WHAT??”

*nervous laughter by all*

Lip ring boy: “Yeah, it looks like you’re out of luck. The bars are open until 2 a.m., though.”

Emily: “Oh, yeah..hmm…well we just wanted to go to bed with a Tall Boy.”

*awkward silence*

Scott: “OK thanks…”

*Exit Scene*

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.)

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.

Happy Birthday, Michelangelo March 6, 2008

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”

consumption March 2, 2008

from this weekend

• whole wheat pizza with mushrooms
• bagel with egg and turkey sausage
• black bean quesadilla
• Wendy’s #2 combo (my gosh, it had been a year or more since I had one of these. I do not feel guilty in the LEAST)
• coffee, tea, coffee, tea, coffee

+ :

 

twice watched (I learned a lot such as what “stet” means and that I like Alec Baldwin):

& the reading & listening to:

& the gut-wrenching:

neighbors 2 March 2, 2008

So, where I have very easily and most likely without much insight (because most my judgements are based in paranoia, hence I’m the emperor with no clothes) assumed my neighbors to the left of me were crazy, I have probably done a very good job of exposing my own bizarre (crazy) behavior to my new neighbor to the right of my apartment. She moved in a week ago. But really, everything started a few days before that. I got myself off on the wrong foot by walking out the door one morning, the morning before she moved in, locked the door, took two steps, and then realized I left my keys on  kitchen counter. And this was after I congratulated myself on remembering the following essential items that were in my hands: one plastic bag with my lunch and 2 Diet Pepsis; one thermos with warm coffee & fat free half & half & about 20 tps of Splenda; one slice of bread in a sandwich baggie (to be topped with peanut butter when I reached the office); my gym bag; and another plastic bag full of “health snacks” I had picked up at the grocery store. But of course I couldn’t take any of this anywhere without my keys. Fortunately, I remembered that the handy man was working next door on the final touches before the new tenant arrived, so I walked around the building to the front door and knocked. He answered the door, covered in paint or glue or something, and gave me that look of “oh it’s…you” (because I handwrite and type my maitenance requests) and fetched my keys from the storage shack on the back lot. So there, I cursed myself before she even arrived. And I drove off with cold coffee.

My first near encounter with new neighbor to the right was this: my bestest friend from high school, Casey, was in town from Chicago. And friends from high school are the best because you can act like you’re in high school when you’re together at all times. You just are giggly girls with better skin and breasts than you used to have. Anyway, Casey and I used to have this really stupid thing where if we were walking up the stairs, and one of us was walking in front of the other one, then the one in front would slow down so that her butt was in the face of the other one and in a reaaal Sooutheern drawwwl cry out “II-III CAA-AAN’T MAA-AAKE III-IT” and then the other one would say “YES YOU CAN (DAMNIT)” and shove her ass up the stairs with her own two hands. I swear, all those years of private education with non-co-ed PE and Bible classes really warped us into thinking this was OK public behavior. And so, a decade later, I find it appropriate to do this while we’re walking up the steps to my apartment - with boyfriend in tow, probably covering his head in shame - and as I arrived at the top of the steps triumphantly with my ass in Casey’s hands and while Casey’s going on about how proud I must be that everyone thinks we’re lesbians - and isn’t that what I want? what I’ve wanted all along? why did I suggest it last night? when people were looking at us in the club? - I see that my new neighbor’s door is wide open and she’s probably unpacking her boxes with her family as our blabbering voices come flowing in and echo off her bare walls. (i.e., WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD!) Thank gawd my other (real lesbians) neighbors did not have their windows or doors open because I would have really been mortified and felt that I needed to explain my politically correct self in a politically incorrect situation.

But of course, since we were acting like high school fools together, I continued my retardedness by blasting Steely Dan’s Aja while I thought my new neighbor had left momentarily, and cooked us up a fine dinner that included hitting every metal pan at least 3 times before I was done, and did not come back to semi-senses until we were talking loudly on the back lawn once more, this time with wine in hand, when I saw my neighbor’s parents step outside the back door to drop some empty boxes out and I kindly introduced myself and welcomed them to the neighborhood. I was then introduced to the boyfriend and finally to my real neighbor, who seemed completely overwhelmed with her moving day. I also made a point to tell them I thought the gas leak they had reported that day was just cat pee which is why I hadn’t called for it to be serviced. (And bit my tongue before making any cruder references.)

So anyway, I spent the next week and all of today being THE QUIETEST NEIGHBOR on our row, because I felt guilty for our first encounter and because I usually am the quietest with the few exceptions of when high school friends are in town, my cat attacks me or jumps on the table he knows he’s not supposed to be on for the 100th time, or I host one of my 4 parties each year, which really are so spread out no one cares to notice or complain.

I hope my tame behavior this week calms my new neighbor’s fears and that she appreciates the note I left on her door this morning explaining that I called the gas guy again and he found the leak, and it’s to her apartment, and they’re cutting off her gas until the property management fixes the problem, which will be Monday at the earliest. :-/

–

sorry I never use good grammar or sentence structure in this blog. it’s the only place where I can take a break from writing professionally. I should really change the name of this thing and hide any real life connection to it, for my own salvation. and I wonder why no one reads this thing. ha!

My romantic Valentine’s Day dinner February 19, 2008

I know it’s a little late, but I had to share my wonderful Valentine’s evening with you. It all started out somewhere very romantic.

You see, Scott and I had this great idea that we could avoid all the Valentine’s Day crowds by eating somewhere NO ONE would take their date. OK, since it does advertize “gourmet burgers,” we figured a few 16-year-old couples would be in the mix.

Funny, that wasn’t the case at all.

This is where Scott and I discovered that there would be a 20 minute wait because the place was packed with about 100 families, each with about 6 children screaming for milkshakes:

After some hard liquor, we were seated in a lovely single-seater booth, right next to the kitchen. Our waiter addressed us as he was in moved in between filling glasses at larger tables. He really needed roller skates. And perhaps the desire to listen. Especially when someone is ordering more drinks.

But we were able to make the executive decision to order a fancy appetizer while we waited on our entrees:

At this point, we also exchanged Valentine’s gifts. I received a very appropriate present from my boyfriend: a book written by my boyfriend!

I think Tony would have had a lot to say about our meal, on top of admonishing me on why he was not invited.

We, however, were pretty much ready to chow on our own legs by the time our meal came out, so we weren’t all too picky.

In fact, we think the burgers may have been drugged with some sort of narcotic.

…or I was REALLY in the mood by this point!

We ended our Red holiday at the Red Robin where we ate Red meat by going to the movie theatre where we sat in Red seats and saw There Will Be Blood. I promise you this was not planned at all.

ps: you can’t tell from these pictures, but I actually have my hair pulled back in a ponytail. that’s not a comeover.