My twelve-month visit to my gynecological oncologist, though brief, was brief. Meaning, he under-charged me again (this time lower than last time) and my weight and blood pressure are “text-book perfect,” but I forgot I had to have another pap smear and (though I thought I was getting out of it) another ultrasound. Part of me is disappointed, because I just finished paying off my pathology bill and wanted to feel good about that for a while, but part of me wants the gravity of these things. I had cancer, and I want to remember it, I want it to not fade away and become unreal. Is it strange that I want to celebrate being alive by going back to the places where I was so afraid, going back to the same offices and procedures but with the knowledge that life is still as fragile as it was, but also still as rescued? Thoughts.
I know I should be working on something right now, but that’s just cerebral. I mean there’s none of that physical heaviness or stomach ache that comes with guilt. I’m babysitting on the ninth floor of the downtown Holiday Inn, on the nicest loveseat, two sleeping kids in the other room, the TVA towers out of the window and sounds of traffic coming up faint from the street. I brought the laptop to do some more writing, but I need this … it’s so rare that guilt is gone from me, that things are soft and still in this way. So rare to put a baby and a five-year-old to bed and they do what I ask without any reluctance, they listen to me read, they’re quiet as mice when I pray for them, they turn over when I walk to the door and there they are, eyes already shut. If I have kids, could they be like this.
I came here from a wedding, Rachel’s, and I’m lost again in mysteries. Like, how can people promise to love each other forever? It seems silly, something about it seems shameful, like they should know better, someone should have stopped them saying that in front of everybody. People make promises like a splash on the top of the water. Because something, I don’t know what, really exists, and you want to know it. Hard to explain. I’ve been thinking about marriage. All the hype, and on the other hand all the slipping in and out of beds, how it used to be before divorce was easier / less stigmatized: everyday mistresses, everyday lovers. Both of these things seem like a shame, like the most sorrowful shame, the heaviest disappointment and like the stepping-stones being swept away in front and behind by a dog with a brush for a face. This is the mystery, then: why it should disappoint so … and why people should ever have let themselves build their hopes up so high. I see I have everything to learn.
Tomorrow, I’m going to have coffee with the morning coffee people, probably go to church, which I continue to feel completely at a loss about, and also I will go to Mom & Dad’s with Christmas song singing people where we will sing. There are such good songs. I want my sisters to learn this Angelus ad Virginem arrangement I did in college … so beautiful. Speaking of which, Dr. Moore invited me to come sing NEME’s spring concert with them. Oh man. Monday night I have Tickets to a Movie. Tuesday night I have Rehearsal with a Musician. Tonight Samantha called me to invite me to something and was irritated that I couldn’t come. Why did I feel like life was so black, earlier? Not black, not black.
My decision to pursue graduate study has to do with awareness, the deepening element of life, one that I have treasured since childhood. For as long as I can remember I’ve had a reverence for noticing, for honoring the physical world and the inner life with attention and an eagerness to understand and connect. For me, writing has always burst from that ground. Since college, where I first showed my poems and creative essays to peers and teachers, I’ve seen that I have a gift for cultivating these awarenesses in others by my writing, and now understand it to be a calling as needful as medicine, engineering, or politicking—perhaps greater, since what prolongs life has no power to deepen it.
Investing in an MFA program is not the only way I could develop my writing, or the easiest, but I’ve decided to take this route because I believe that working closely with great teachers and other gifted students will mature my understanding and technical skills with a more profound richness than I could find on my own, and a greater expediency. Entering a community of writers will help me bring my voice before a larger audience, into a larger conversation, either by introducing me to a professional writer’s lifestyle, or by imbuing me with a love for teaching other writers. I’m not afraid to say that I don’t know which career path will open before me; I only know that I will find it, and walk it, with the same urgency that has compelled me to prepare for it.
I learned to love literature in high school and entered college with the decision to study English. I flourished under the influence of story in fiction and memoirs, and encroached on other disciplines, reading history, philosophy, music theory and literary theory, all of which I loved. Art and nature have been present in my consciousness all throughout, as sentinels. Poetry, however, always pierced the deepest: all life experiences seemed to hold poems within themselves, to me, as they do now. A recent diagnosis of ovarian cancer—the least malignant kind, mercifully—as well as other jarring life changes have drawn out some of those poems in the last few years, and I have seen growth in my ability to connect the disparate, expose the hidden, and to recover and recover and recover awareness.
It is not hard to say why I became interested the University of Virginia’s MFA program, well-known for its teachers, setting, funding and reputation. As an East Tennessean, I need mountains to keep sane, and the Blue Ridge range alone could draw me to Virginia. The real questions, why this program is a perfect fit for me and why I hope to beat the competition, are answered here in my essay: I have decided to become a writer, and teach, or a teacher, and write. The academic rigor, creative space, nearby mountains, and financial aid offered by UVA are the most complete dimensions I can imagine within which to pursue my vocation, and I believe I am a safe bet for the University, as well. I can confidently offer a portfolio of my best work, work that exhibits a strong and wise character of its own, and recommendations from professors who know my talent and dedication to a work begun. I believe that our world, engrossed in the action and reaction of opinion, violence and financial profit, thirsts for a deeper life. I want to enter strongly into this vocation in a time when it is needed, a time which is always “now.”
Ok, here’s the list for now:
- University of Virginia in Charlottesville
- Vanderbilt University in Nashville
- University of North Carolina in Greensboro
- University of Mississippi in Oxford
- Syracuse University in Syracuse
- Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond
- University of Arkansas in Fayetteville
& that’s not in order. Hope I get some Christmas money. Also, today I’m hoping to finish a couple of purpose statements & possibly some teaching statements. Will post a purpose statement when I’m ok with it. Your feedback would be appreciated.
I wrote what I thought was a brilliant statement of purpose for UVA, only to come back to it hours later & find that it is COMPLETELY, COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.
I most of the time feel like sarcasm and bitterness are uninvited in my life, and most of the time they are. In this moment however I print their invitations with my imaginary printer that I am using to print everything I need to print, which includes transcript requests to The Lipscomb, because the Registrar doesn’t know how to use email, and also forms for The Grad Schools. The Grad Schools know how to use email, and they know how to make online applications, which they have made and are lengthening according to the lists of their applicants and the suffixes on the names of their five highest-paid employees, whose salaries are lengthening according to the string of imaginary zeroes after the imaginary heading in the Book of My Life: Things I Have Accomplished, and Will Accomplish. 000000000.0000000000
If I can make Christmas presents happen by the 25th, make a grant application happen by the 17th, make four or five grad school applications happen by the 31st, and make rent and loans and utilities happen by the 1st of January, then I will be alive, inexplicably, sane, not wandering around the Broadway post office leaning in car windows asking for money to go to Burger King. If I can make it alive and sane and un-homeless to January, maybe the 31st of January, when the last of the bright & shining applications and portfolios will be either thumbed or unthumbed, either in the inbox or the outbox, either liked or disliked, then, I can wear something with a hood, maybe something red and a note in my chest that someone wrote that says in so many words i love you, and walk around in a place that is far enough away.
It would be nice, in proportion to the difficulty, to take a trip. I have the lists of places, lengthening in proportion to the lengthening list of places I have not traveled while reaching this age, twenty-four, twice twelve, twice twice six. Even in my soul I am untraveling, and this is probably the most important of anything. At this point I will not mail the invitations to sarcasm and bitterness, but will shred them, in my imaginary shredder that I am using to shred the invitations I printed for misery, wretchedness and poverty, which is even now spitting out in long strips the words “misery,” “wretchedness” and “poverty” sliced into unintelligible pieces along with a humming sound (like the happy librarian pushing the cart or the nipped & jaunty downtown-walker) and a crunching, as of snow in the morning, or cereal in the morning.
I guess things are ok.
lately about Peter, and how he dealt with Christ leaving. I’ve been having a still and silent couple of days, walking in and out of rooms like every one was a garden, and following sunlight like a leaf. I have so much to do but I’m only doing what I can, and not crying about the rest, which is normally what I do. Yesterday I bought two new tires and got a partial alignment. Good, that my Dad wants to take care of me, wants to drive away from his workplace to meet me and look at tires, wants to loan me enough to get tires with 40,000 miles on them. I got a kefir at the Co-op, and he got fig bars.
Stillness of days has to do with thinking, this about how I get cared-for, this about how rich I feel, being the owner of two new tires! Also with Innocence Mission, since I put on Christ is my Hope yesterday and haven’t taken it off. I take it to the car when I have to drive, bring it inside when I have to come inside. I realized (an aside) that “O Lord of Light” is a Gregorian chant. Of course, oh of course. Maybe someday I will meet the Perises on earth … otherwise, it will be after. The stillness also has to do with an empty house (wonder where my roommates are), and with reading Acts, thinking about Paul and Peter. How were things, just after Christ left? It seems that paradigms were being broken. Strange, that things would change so much … but only after He left. It’s like Him being there was so many years of people being incredulous, so many years of people standing there looking at the sky, wondering if they were dreaming. Sometimes you have to leave the presence of a miracle before you can understand it, or let your life be changed by it, I think. I’m still thinking.
from uneviolenteenvie
Completely overwhelmed & it’s only ten forty-five? In the morning?
So, I have poem for the wonderful man in my portfolio & am (I hope) revising it for the last time, today. I found a photo of him, and thought I should show it to you. Check this brilliant codger out:
…addressing the Law Society in Dublin this year. The Law Society?
