I’m so excited/ happy/ relieved/ scared that it’s hard to really communicate anything more about this update.

…on the waitlist at iowa state. which sounds ok, but only 8 people are accepted, so asking 1 not to go to school for a free terminal degree in a creative writing/ enviro studies is asking a lot. even so…fingers crossed.

and if not, i’m off to italy and argentina, suckers.

as of today, i am 15-25 pages of  honors thesis, one new story, one story revision, 6-8 poem edits, one designed b.f.a book, one 10 page research paper on the environmental movement in the 1960s, and a few large thesis edits away from graduation.

so, i’m still kind of far from graduation. that’s a lot of work. even though i’m chipping away at this stuff all the time and it feels very close. meh.

Took this one at the USA/ Argentina match on saturday. Which was one of the best nights ever.

…And look how happy he is!! he’s just the greatest. I look forward to watching him in the future.

I spend too much time missing soccer and not enough time with a ball at my feet. Everyone should feel this way about something, should love something this much. I’m lucky that I have two passions that are strong enough to carry me through life, content.

And here’s an MFA update (speaking of nonexistent futures).

REJECTIONS
Michigan
Iowa Writer’s Workshop
Indiana
Washington University

WAITLISTED
Iowa State University

WAITING TO HEAR (but probably rejected):
Purdue University
University of Florida

So, I aimed high. And in fiction, too, a genre with which I have probably too little experience for schools like these…but to me, what’s the point of getting an MFA if you don’t aim high, or if you have to pay for it at all? So, with the exception of waiting to hear back from I-State (and unfortunately I don’t think I can get my hopes up there, although the MFA director says I am “very high” on the waitlist and would fit in well with the program)….it looks like I’m off to Italy in September. I just wish I had some time to plan for that, or to prep myself for how scary it will be to live in another country for a while.

Obviously I’m not deterred. It’s not like writing is a choice for me. I’ll just simply always do it, and likely with very little praise or reward, but I’m okay with that. I chose my major knowing that I couldn’t do much with it in the outside world. But I’m building a life, not a career. I can find work when I need to. I can go back to school no problem if I need to.

Everything is going to be alright.

You Begin
Margaret Atwood

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

Eros
Louise Glück

I had drawn my chair to the hotel window, to watch the rain.

I was in a kind of dream, or trance –
in love, and yet
I wanted nothing.

It seemed unnecessary to touch you, to see you again.
I wanted only this:
the room, the hair, the sound of the rain falling,
hour after hour, in the warmth of the spring night.

I needed nothing more; I was utterly sated.
My heart had become very small; it took very little to fill it.
I watched the rain falling in heavy sheets over the darkened city –

You were not concerned. I did the things
one does in daylight, I acquitted myself,
but I moved like a sleepwalker.

It was enough and it no longer involved you.
A few days in a strange city.
A conversation, the touch of a hand.
And afterward, I took off my wedding ring.

That was what I wanted: to be naked.

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

I will never be able to work as hard as I want, if that work never gets me where I want to go.

you want me to do something… tell me i can’t do it.

-Maya Angelou

I keep thinking about a movie I saw recently, A Single Man. The cinematography in that film is  interesting, because the colors are usually dulled out except for a few brief very bright moments during one man’s day. I’m living like that, too, now. The good parts of my day stand out so brightly that I usually endure them with a sort of squint — from either glare or  constant smile, but it’s hard to tell which, in the moment. I like these scenes of color. They’re simple, and simple is best. So much warmer.

I could fail at everything I try at for the rest of my life. What matters to me more: enjoying success with myself or enduring failure in the company of others who love me? I want to believe so badly in the latter. I want to believe that the quality of the relationships I can sustain (not the amount of money I can make or the amount of success I can garner) is the true benchmark for how well I can live my life.

Sometimes I look behind me and all I see are the shells of people who no longer care about me, or whom I try no longer to care about. Sometimes I look into the faces of the people I still love and I tell myself it won’t last, or that it can’t last. At what point does “I love you so much” or “Come see me again” become “I think it’s time we see other people” or “I have to go now”? At what point does affection or attachment collapse, and how do we avoid it?