When the Food Jars Come to Haunt

After some belabored breaths, I had to close the kitchen cabinet for fear the two--three!--opened, half consumed, year old peanut butter jars would jump from their shelf to meet their due demise. In two weeks, it's moving time. We leave the apartment that stuffy hot and bitter cold and, occasionally, perfect breezes, built. We leave the apartment for a less expensive, more convenient option 10 miles closer to work. We leave the neighborhood gentrifying around us, the fusion Mexican restaurants and funky hair salons (my, what $45 can buy you), and swap one interchangeable chain coffee place on the corner for another on a Rogers Park corner.

We're not moving that far, but we're moving again. Make this my 7th move in as many years. We gain a view of the lake, a used bookstore, a free shuttle to work. I'll save time in the existential wasteland of commuting. At the same time, I'll loose the carpool time with my excellent carpool buddy. Or, I'll miss the absence of human sound on the nearly full 8am train car, watching the newspaper readers and head-drooping nappers as they default into quiet and calm.

We're leaving the back door that was kicked in, despite the deadbolt's mighty hold, on move-in day. Tony, blessed building manager Tony, had no choice but to do this, when faced with the prospect of trying each key on the telephone-pole-thick loop of unlabeled keys that went to locks that were locks no more. This is the apartment that came with a 2 x 4 to fortify the same back door. This is the apartment whose walls crumbled down to brick after a particularly relentless rainstorm one year ago this October. This was the glorious apartment T & I drove straight for, delirious from days on the road from Montana. Where the UHaul would stop, nobody knew. This is the apartment where staying immobile under a blanket in the midday cold of winter meant survival of the extremities at the expense of a productive writing day. The building's heat timer knew nobody would be home, because, why, this was the workday hour! Here, we pounded out cover letters off and on for eight months. Here I tended to write desperately voiced poetry about consumerism and then forced myself to stop deferring to tropes, even if the cold and the din of city brought these ideas by the fistful. The Carl Sandburg city "under the terrible burden of destiny, laughing as a young man laughs," bringing these images.

What we wished to consume was the tiny offering this city could afford us. Thanks for the free pesticide spray under our sinks once a month, landlord. Thanks for the sheet of ice out back, you, building manager, would break up with a sledge hammer every few days rather than fix the leaky roof drain. Thank you neighbor children enamored with our two cats, meeting us at the fence line to pet them through the links.

So I do it all again for one more year, marking time with the lease. This time, we have stairs with a bum step on the second story landing. We have a mantle. How very stately, this bathroom window painted shut. I can only hope we'll have the threat of rats and soggy walls just like last time. We'll have the breeze and light like last time.

A Move of One’s Own

After 15 years of a stationary life (home owner for ten of those years) in Durham I moved three times in three years. Major moves. From NC to Montana. From Montana to New Orleans. And in the last week, from Nola to Ohio.

With the Montana move I went for it. I packed all my furniture, the adult furniture earned from many hard hours of restaurant work. The real dining room table with real chairs. The bookshelves and the lamps and the groovy 70’s endtable and the nice mixer. The mattress...ahhhh. The piece that made that decision for me though, was that just a year ago I had purchased my first real sofa, and I wasn’t ready to give it up. For years I had sat on futons, the kind that slink down no matter how much you shore them up. Each slump made me more irritated and I vowed one day, I would sit in peace.
See? Wasn’t it nice? Carter furniture out of North Carolina. Firm but springy. There was a subtle print to the black that doesn’t show up in the picture. The sage chenille cushions were nubby yet silky soft. My cats would sleep on the each of the flat arms like New York Library lions. I miss you sofa, as I sit here, writing on the floor, my butt bones aching. And I believe my cats, flopped here on the floor with me in stereo, miss the arms.

When I graduated from Montana in 2008, that’s when gas was almost $5 a gallon. Nevermind two grad school years had depleted the coffer. I sold off all my furniture on craigslist. As people appraised, harangued and eventually hauled off every stick, I admit I was pretty depressed by the end. I was 39, and while these were just things, these furnishings had made me feel adult. And it was really best if I didn’t stop to think about how many hours of restaurant work and careful comparison shopping and obsessively planned IKEA shopping adventures had gone into all this.

Of course, writing is more important to me than nice furniture. I’m just saying.

In Nola, I lucked out and my apartment came furnished. With nice antiques. I’m realizing how lucky that was as I furnish now from scratch. I’ve spent a good deal of the past week sitting on the floor, assembling black particle board furniture with one of those microscopic Allen wrenches. My knuckles are cranky. One reason I chose all black assembly furniture was I figured this could be a theme. My new Mac is silver and black. My drums are silver and black. I have silver decorative things. Black furniture. Sure.

The real reason, though, is that I can carry unassembled furniture by myself. For great furniture deals at garage sales or little stores or ads the general rule is you haul. Some new grad student friends helped me unload the trailer, but they live out in the country, with a kid, and I can’t call them every day. Bottom line it’s me who has to get this done.

And that’s when I feel sad and single. As I drag boxes of flat packed furniture down the driveway and up stairs. Isn’t there supposed to be someone on the other end? Helping me lift? And yeah, I mean someone male with nice forearms.

A friend from my Nola writers’ group said he and his girlfriend devised a moving strategy: she packs and cleans and he lifts. At this I thought: Gee, I have this super awesome method where I pack and clean and lift.

Then again, moving alone has benefits; I haven’t had to negotiate a trick. If I decide on all black furniture then it’s a done deal. I don’t have to come home and hear, “Check out this awesome plaid La-Z Boy recliner someone just left out on the street!!!” I don’t have to deal with someone wondering if all black might be depressing, or if we can afford this, or maybe we should look around more, or..? Who knows? Everyone has their own agenda. Moving is a series of a thousand tiny decisions and another person’s opinion doubles the amount of choices that must be made. Maybe more depending on the person.

When I get everything home, and I set it up, all according to how I want it, I’m ready to go. No clutter in my mental space. Nothing that isn't mine because I want it there. And I’m so totally Woolf here, in that I need hours to piddle and shuffle and rummage before I get to work. I can’t even focus with a dog around. Maybe I don’t need someone asking me what we are going “to do” about that huge painting that needs hanging. Maybe it’ll just sit on the hallway floor for a while. Maybe it’ll sit there for five freaking years if I feel like it, because I’m too busy writing.

My Longest Relationship: Apple

Apple and I have been one since floppies  flopped. Since the rainbow apple, not the silvery gossamer fruit, donned the back windows of professor VWs. Back when external meant something. 

We're talking  Apple I here that my Dad brought home. In college I had the Apple IIIIe. In the 90's I had a Performa for Chrissakes  (PERFORMA!!!) and then I bought that big blue doorstop, the whatever that was, and after all that, I landed on the iBook G4. My first laptop. This was first product, to be truthful, that didn't mean I spent more quality time with Apple Support than my family. For four and half years my iBook was a faithful companion. I began to gloat over what a perfect piece of machinery it was, almost Japanese. There was the Classic 9 snafu, sure, but that was so quickly forgotten. The only trouble, really, was Dreamweaver, already a whispery ghost of a program, so who cared?

We soared through the MFA, my iBook and I. We wrote stories and essays. We started about five books. We completed on critical essay.  But over the past year, the iBook was slowing down. I didn't want to admit it but I knew the rainbow wheel was spinning for longer and longer. But I was going to gut it out until I began my PhD prog, finagle that discount. I was moving. Times were lean. 

Then this summer — the troubles.  I sought help and lost almost three weeks of my life to the Marigny ponytail Apple UNcertified repairdude, who despite his snazzy jumper,  after multiple phone calls,  had no advice to offer than since my computer didn't charge, perhaps it needed a new charger. 

Brilliant.

The Genius Bar set me straight, with a new jack and a fresh keyboard, and I felt a resurgence of that warm fuzziness. 

Then, two days ago, halfway through my move from Nola to Ohio. The move that involves a U Haul trailer, two cats, and me having to teach online when I can at truck stops, I awoke at my brother's in Birmingham to the static rainbow monitor. Bad.  The screenshot then began spinning, flipping, as if running code for the end of the universe. Very Bad. 

It was then I realized, for all the money I had spent in repair, I could have had a brand new Dell. But — to turn PC? Was Apple loyalty merely my artsy ego? Or did I really stand by the mechanics of the Mac? 

My brother drove me to The Summit shopping center in Birmingham. I bravely through open the big glass door of the Apple Store gripping my Visa,  the one with the absurd credit limit because Bank of America secretly desires to repossess my house. I receive checks and invitations to consolidate my debt even as I boil meat bones to flavor my beans. Despite Bank of America's ideas, I am not the sort of person who can brandish the plastic at will.

But...I'm a writer. I'm starting a PhD program. I need the tools. This. That. The pile was small but made me exceedingly nervous. I sweated. The Apple guy rang me out with his little tricorder thingy as Mountainbrook yuppies, people whose Visas can withstand the abuse, milled around in their madras shorts and Izods, a fashion which has remained unchanged since Reconstruction. 

$1500!!! 

I woke up in the middle of the night. For a GRAND less I could have had Dell! A GRAND. This was retarded. This Mac fascination. Who did I think I was? This product is for the wealthy. For people who can let that backlit keyboard luminesce on their designer Swedish furniture. FORGET Apple. I thought, as I remembered how i had to fight at the store through the iPhone masses to try and get help with my computer. Remember, Apple? Remember when your business was computers and not yuppie gadgets?!!!!

I vowed to find the newest store and return this smoke and mirrors trendy box.

But then. 

I pulled out my MacBook Pro. 

It was silver and shiny. The keyboard pulsed and glowed. Kellleeeeee. 

Hangin' Tough

New Kids in the Block are playing the New Orleans Arena. I picture threadbare Members Only jackets, male pattern baldness, formation dancing, Alleve, Metarie housewives in Coldwater Creek matchables, Cosmos in turquoise plastic tumblers.

As we can see, the post-MFA adjustment is taking time. A fellow Montana MFA grad and I are sharing her studio. Sleeping on the same air mattress. Scrambling eggs out of our single skillet. Reinflating the air mattress. A sampling of college friends, where they are now: head of the radiology dept at Duke University, hi-profile Wall Street stockbroker, professor at Emory working with legislation to protect battered women. As my parents like to remind me, aside from bad marks in cursive writing, my report card showed promise. What went wrong here? A-R-T. Ohnonono, I couldn’t work in a hospital or court or office. I must create.

For work I’m teaching online where I’m learning the joys of emoticons, exclamation points and the sandwich technique:

Dear Administrators:

I am eager to embark on this exciting opportunity. I noticed you don’t pay for training. Is that legal? Again, thanks for this exciting opportunity.

The pay is actually decent, once I actually start teaching (a month from now? A year? From the grave?) For most this job is a part time gig for parents so they afford karate lessons as they organize medical records at some hospital somewhere. Teaching online is the new Tetrus. I’m holding out on full time so I can work on my book. Take my MFA third year, as I’m explaining it. It’s hard. The Visa emits tendrils of smoke as I swipe. I scan the restaurant employment ads with the shameful hungered stealth of drunk-driving by an ex’s house. I worked in the biz for years, have the necessary experience to land a fat job where I can pocket $200 plus a night. For the mere price of my soul. Double hard is that post-Katrina, all the best restaurants in town are (supposedly) in dire need of staff.

The more I sit in hipster coffee shops with my iBook with other black-squared glasses wearing hipsters the more the self-loathing foments.

Booted From the MFA Womb

The ripping Kansas winds and humidity blanket let me know I am definitely not in Montana anymore. I want to go home but where is that? If I clicked the heels of my pink flip flops I might get thrown in a worm hole.

My Camry (equipped with a U-Haul trailer) thinks it's some kind of badass parked with the 18 wheelers in the Econo Lodge parking lot of Salina. I've spent the past twelve hours becoming intimately acquainted with the roadkill wildlife of Nebraska. Feathered, furred, domestic, wild, taloned, pawed, clawed. Too bad I can't work some kind of matchmaking deal with all those taxidermy schools in Montana.

I've also had too much time to wonder what I'm doing.

Two more hell days of driving and I'll be in New Orleans to meet fellow MFA grad Anne Marie Inge. She asked me on the phone the other day that gut wrenching post MFA Q: Have you been writing? I was actually writing pretty soon after graduation, but everything got put on hold for the move. And a kickass trip to Glacier National Park. It's weird to think a few weeks ago I was hiking to Iceberg Lake and communing with mountain goats. And in a few days I'll be slurping oysters in Nola. All it's takes is a lot of driving and fuckload of money for gas.

I am still in Missoula, and I have to disagree with Trina, hanging around town does not allow you to milk the thrall of the MFA. Not when almost everyone is gone, and you keep running into First Years (soon to be Second Years) at the taco joint who ask when you are leaving. Did I mention it SNOWED this week?

For many MFA's it's the two years after that are the make or break time, not the two years spent in school. Was the MFA that lark, that ha-ha amusing time, that last grab at the golden ring of youth, that idyllic interlude where Art Mattered that one will always fondly remember (sigh) — or is this the beginning of a writing career?

Are we beginning to understand why there's a scad of blogs dedicated to the MFA application process, yet so few about after the MFA?

On the plus side, many Montana MFA's actually have launched writing careers. Former prof Kevin Canty (alias The Cheerleader) and Montana grad/now best-selling author Aryn Kyle both agree that it's those who keep at it who seem to be making it. Those who "decide to do something else for a few years" tend to drop out.

In other news, I'm selling all my furniture and it's depressing as hell to post on Craigslist and have people sniff at your grandmother's dresser that you moved 2500 miles across the country but can't afford to move back, finger the scratch and then lo-ball you and then even after you come down in price say no thanks.

Now I live in Seattle

Do you know how I know that I now live in Seattle? The city has seen fit to give me a library card! Because what I really need in my life right now is more books. I haven't even unpacked all the books I own, but that's neither here nor there. We do what we must in order to find comfort in chaos.

My review of Paige Ackerson-Kiely's In No One's Land is up on Gently Read Literature (see link at right).

This morning, I attempted to write two imitation poems--one on Frank O'Hara's Lana Turner poem and one on Baudelaire's "Double Room." This is the first writing I've done since graduation.

I've learned a couple things over the course of my move:

1. The style of my clothing is "too old". This from the lovely lady at the Buffalo Exchange in the U-district, where I attempted to sell my skinny clothes this morning in order to buy groceries (perhaps my insistence on buying groceries is directly linked to said skinny clothes no longer fitting me). New city, new harsh truths.

2. MFA closure comes not from graduation, but from leaving town. As long as you remain in the same physical space as your MFA program and your MFA friends, you are still in the thrall of it all. You can convince yourself that what you've done is a significant thing and everyone around you will concur. The minute you leave, it's over. No one cares that you earned your MFA. Very few people even know what MFA stands for. And when you explain what MFA stands for (I don't recommend this), most people look at you as if you are stupid. And then you begin to wonder if maybe you are a little stupid. You think on it a bit and decide that, yes, you are profoundly stupid. And when the next person asks what you've been doing for the past two years, you tell him or her that you were teaching. Or freelancing. Or just about anything other than attending an MFA program. And that denial is your closure.

Back to the pile of boxes...