in lieu of.
I’d begun this piece recalling the time my ex made us burritos with mayonnaise for dinner, the potential of that metaphor just too good to pass up. My words had been slow in coming, though, the point of the piece hazy, amorphous, not coming into focus. I wondered whether it was futile looking back, examining this particular past trauma, my slow words perhaps a sign from the universe that I would be better served looking forward, even inward, rather than back.
So I write here instead of the sting I felt receiving last week a rejection letter from the one MFA creative writing program to which I’d applied, not letter so much as a form email, dated May 23rd of last year. I’d hit submit as an exercise more than anything, making that positive cause for some positive effect. Still, I was slightly butt hurt in that slightly personal way when rejected submitting a very personal manuscript, the beginning of a very personal novel, my very personal coming of age in the nineties.
The experience was really quite the head spin, I have to say. Just days earlier I’d gotten another, “Visit classes, here!,” “Talk to current grad students, email them here!,” and filled out and submitted my FAFSA, feeling those teaser thrills of victory. It isn’t as though I don’t have confidence in my potential, whether or not the gatekeepers do will be a whole other question to contend with. I did wonder, consider, though, whether or not I am truly ready at this particular moment. Not so much a lack of faith as an honest conversation between myself and my intuition.
I’m not the kind of guy to make a back up plan, partly because it feels like baked in failure, partly because I just really do not plan. It’s sometimes just a feeling, a vague inclination - I would like to try this, perhaps I will. And others it’s that fire in the belly - I must do this now. But along the lines of a back up plan that is really not a back up plan, I’d also applied for and have been awarded a Growth and Discovery grant from my regular joe job. Because it helps to work a regular joe job at a Tony award winning local repertory company that runs employee programs like this. Yes, my budget’s hella tight, but it comes with the privilege of working here. In the arts. Where I am safe with the other misfits and weirdos and queers. So in lieu of beginning graduate school in the fall, I’ll begin a writing class at the end of the month, every Monday for five weeks. And since I’ve already filled out the FAFSA I’ll be starting that battery of writing courses at Berkeley City in the fall.
The experience has really been quite the head spin, receiving that form email rejection letter dated May of last year on Friday, the following Monday getting word I’ll be training to facilitate one of my local trans / peer support groups, a most welcome and beautiful head spin.
I am the Pan at the halfway mark, finding my way, finding my way…
Looking outward / inward / looking forward.