Only in New Orleans

When I marched in the MJ second line, I took a picture. A man, assuming I was a tourist shouted, “Only in New Orleans, darlin!” Next to me a woman gushed, “Oh my God, I love it here. I’m moving here. This place is so much better than New Jersey!” She had the Nola fever.

True, amazing events like an MJ second line are only in New Orleans. It’s a crazy, wonderful place. Sometimes though, it’s just crazy.

The weather forecast this week is thunderstorms. A break from the heat is nice, but while New Orleans might be celebrated for its food, music, and diverse culture, the drainage system is lousy. My car flooded this spring because of a rainstorm (Not hurricane. Not tropical storm. Just heavy rain.) A thousand dollars later my Camry was bleached for mold and the wiring under the carpet painted gold to prevent rust. My neighbor’s car was RIP. I was lucky that the engine and transmission did take in water.

I confess when my mother first said she would give me her Camry I was grateful but not excited. A silver VW Golf hatchback would have excited me. Or a Prius. Camrys don’t handle exactly, nor are they sexy. But after driving one for three years, can I just say:

Camry you have taken me out West. You have retraced the journey of Laura Ingalls Wilder. You have spun out on an icy mountain overpass and kept me safe. You have towed a U Haul trailer across the country with a 4 cylnider engine. You did not run out of gas nor falter when I evacuated for Gustav.

Mucho respecto, Camry.

I need my car to move in two weeks. I need my car to get me through grad school. And this poor, much abused, lion-hearted Camry deserves better than a watery death.

My street floods. My surrounding streets flood. Unless you have elevated parking, your car will flood. People tow from their elevated parking spots or keep them gated. Their water gushes down on my street. My landlord offered elevated parking a mile away. But it’s really no fun to walk a mile in torrential downpour.

My courtyard also floods. I arrived sopping at my house, to find six inches of water. To get to my apartment, I took off my shoes and waded through what looked like a cholera pool. I prayed I would not step on a drowned rat. I believe I already mentioned the torrential downpour. Right before I get to my door, a banana bunch cracks off a neighbor’s tree and drops on my head.

Ow.

That night, after a long day of writing and grading papers, I’m ready to relax with a glass of wine and Season Four Weeds. But my landlord sprayed the courtyard that morning, before the rain. Going to open the wine, I heard clicky-clacky scuttling noises. Bad feeling followed. I flipped on the light. My kitchen looked as though it had been redecorated in cockroach wallpaper.

Yeah, I freaking freaked out. I hate nasty chemicals but I busted out the Raid in one hand and wielded my roach shoe (the one I keep handy for murder) in the other. I had this bizarre personality takeover. As if I were in The Matrix and just downloaded “Roach Ninja.” It was like watching this other person at work. I’m pretty sure there was a great deal of screaming and yelling involved. And then a roll of paper towels and Clorox.

Thus concludes my bad day story. Thank you.

A Good Year for MFA Graduates, Okay?

Yep—here we are again. Facing our demons. The bad year? or good year? existential self-questioning had bugged me like Fmr. Gov. Blago’s phone. (…) In honor of May, the time that the current class of MFAers say adieu to what they knew for two years, I offer a recollection of May '08--May '09 (give or take).

The good news. It is still a bit early for you, nearly-graduated one. May still gives you time to look forward to a belabored severance of your new, scared self from your old, confident self. I didn’t freak out or imagine the shape of the future beyond Missoula until August, once the UHaul had to be picked up or I’d forfeit my deposit. Or as I was selling my pre-owned mattress to a family whose toddlery son had to use my bathroom and proceeded to dump (throw?) my last roll of toilet paper in the bowl (true story).

Since August, I’ve learned key money-saving skills. They include how to create life-sustaining feasts in a bowl. It is much like I imagine astronaut food to be but poorly, poorly executed and non-dehydrated. Think rice and beans (dried, not instant), 5lb. beef “savings pack” and onions from the bin at Aldi. Put it all together…and you hope that a burrito wrap can hide the horror:


You know what? Just hold off on that Aldi onion and…grow your own onions! On your kitchen counter. Whoops. Get to know your favorite compost heap pile.


There will be copious reading opportunities for your genre of choice in your city of choice. Or, at least enough to sustain you and comfort you into a false sense that you-are-still-in-the-program. See some famous people. See some soon-to-be-famous people. Silently support them with beams of flowers and rainbows and unicorns and puppies and kittens because they need them and you can wait out karma.

Survive the winter and everything will be a-okay. It won’t seem like it in mid-January in Chicago (or Seattle--or, well, New Orleans is just warm anyway, without mercy, and we'll exclude it from our results), but trust.

You’re going to spend a fair amount of time researching post-graduation fellowships or residencies that will give you another year down the road to do that thing you were doing in the MFA program. You’ll spend the following March opening the rejection letters.

If you’re a poet, maybe you’ll find all the Apocalypse Now stuff mighty useful as an operating principle for your newly imagined collection of poems—you see it taking shape. Your perverse worldview had to pay off sometime. Since the real world is so damn bizarre sometimes, it’s almost too good to be true. It’s taking beautiful, exquisite shape. (Well, at the very least you’re totally estranged from your thesis, which you can’t even bear to look at, much less tinker with. This may change. In a bit, maybe you’ll warm up to it, face its cold icy stare. I’m waiting it out, giving mine the silent treatment for now.) But the scheming and the abject poverty of jet-loving corporations and the illness and the general turmoil treats you OK. It’s something you can always count on. Prose folks, I bet this is the same for you.

You will temp. Boy, will you ever temp. You will know the skills of the temp. Like a substitute teacher, be ready for the 5AM call. “Can you be on site, ah, 10 minutes ago?” Start…now. Watch as the clock on your assignment runs out. Four months, three months, two months… You’ll be searching the fall teaching openings. This is, of course, assuming you didn’t have an idea of what was going on and refused to acknowledge time would pass after you graduated. I found myself desperately clinging to the scam-toned Craigslist posts in the “education” section because, well, what did I have to lose?

And if this hasn’t enticed you, remember, not having the extra money to eat at "restaurants", see concerts, go to, what, the history museums, leaves a heck of a lot of time for sitting down and writing. Right? I’m not a perfect example, no. I spend a lot of time messing around and drafting elaborate and overly complicated, windbaggy emails to my online students. They don’t need to know how amazing Blackboard is. They can access their assignments just fine thank you very much. So, yes, for everyone who is driven, you can sit down and write and something actually materializes on the screen. But one thing is for sure: you won’t be sitting down to just write if you can’t pay your utility bill. Then you’re just in the dark.


And the job tip in the post directly below this one is excellent. Take it. Run with it.


The Three Ps roundup almost one year in:

• PhDs: One up and coming! Go Kelly!
• Publications: Yes, yes and yes.
• Panhandling: I applaud the social service opportunities available in large metropolitan areas for those in need.

Dispatch from Prague: Meat and Cheese Plate

So we've been in Prague for three days now and this is the first chance I've had to access the Internet. I'm at The Globe, one of the only (maybe the only) English-language bookstores in Prague. Yes, I am just the type of person to go to a foreign city and seek-out English-friendly businesses. Sue me.

I've attended one workshop (moderated by Jack Myers for the first half of the month and Roger Weingarten the second) and the other participants, for the most part, are very assertive and serious about their writing. Many are in MFA programs or have just graduated. A couple are undergraduates, and a few more are non-student poets. The program itself is well-organized. Our suitemate at the dorms is a UM MFA grad (circa 2003) who is serving as the TA for Robert Everzs' fiction workshop. He's attended the program in the past and says that the participants are usually older on average, but this year the intake skewed particularly young. Staying in the dorms (as opposed to a nearby hotel, which was the other, more expensive option for accommodations) bears this out. Doug and I are 10 years older than 90% of the other participants. Oh, to be young and drunk in Prague...the 3 AM in-dorm dance parties and the morning-after one-upping reminds me of the good old days back in Missoula. Where have the months gone?


In addition to my workshop, I'm taking a "survival Czech" class to learn the basics of the language. I still don't know how to ask where the bathroom is (beyond doing the pee-pee dance with a supplicant look on my face, which works about half the time), but I have confidence that I will eventually learn this and many other useful phrases.

The local diet is the stuff of my dreams--cold cuts and cheese for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And beer. Unfortunately, I sometimes feel as if I'm being stabbed in the intestines after such a meal. And then there are the dreams. On my first night here, I dreamt that my pug went into a violent seizure and shit a live snake. I woke up that morning to the sound of what I think might have been a nightingale. I'm still recovering from the cognitive dissonance.

I've done a little writing and a little journaling. I wake up every morning at around 3:30 and read for an hour before I can go back to sleep. I've just finished Amy Bloom's Away.

So that's it for dispatch #1. Pictures next time. Na shledanou.