Sorry I’ve been silent.  I’ve just been busy. Stricken with death *my grandmother* who I lived with and took care of for the past 6 years died at the age of 99, on July 31. My mom got diagnosed with breast cancer first of this year. I worked like a dog at my job between the two shitty events. Now I have moved back home to take care of her. Not working. Trying to write my novel–as always–. It sucks. She–my mom–is ok. Maybe going to live. Maybe not. I hope and pray the former is true. However, no matter how hopeful I am, I know that it’s not up to me and that no matter how good things seem to be getting or how hopeful I am, anything could really happen and this life is really not up to us. Basically–we could go at any time and we’re all going to go some time– And what do we spend doing most of the time? Not that which we truly love. Most of life is spent doing obligations, pushing papers around, pleasing people at a job, putting off that creative project one more year, saving, or paying off debt one 20 dollar bill at a time.

Random Kind Stranger #1
Every day in LA, I run into somebody (usually around my age) who left her job to take care of a parent with cancer.  I don’t know what attracts them to me, but they are all around.  The hairdresser today when I went to get my hair cut asked me all sorts of questions to start small talk: Do you live around here? Are you working today? Is this your day off? All specific questions that are hard to avoid the huge and horrible reason why I am really here. After the fifth question, I find myself explaining–confessing the whole story again.  Why are you cutting your hair so short all of a sudden? How come you don’t look at all your hair on the floor when we sweep it away? I shrug my shoulders and look at myself in the mirror.  Am I getting older? Are those worry lines on my forehead? God forbid.
For each new person I meet…I nervously wonder, how do I explain to them my silences… I’ve never been one to look back on my decisions. I don’t look down as they sweep away my hair. I am unflinching. Spartan. (Literally because my mom’s family is from Sparta on one side.)  My long hair is the least of my worries. I’m cutting my hair short in solidarity with my mom, etc.  *It looks cute by the way.* The hairdresser cut and styled it for an hour and a half, talking all about life, her mom, her vision for the salon, etc.  I think the woman liked me because we shared the same experience.  She hugged me at the end of the haircut, but not in a pathetic way. It was one strong, wise woman to another kind of a hug. We tactfully tried to talk around the fact, but I got the impression that her mother–who had stomach cancer–died.

Random Kind Stranger #2:

Random Kind Stranger #2:

A month ago, I went to a party in Silverlake. The people at the party went to college with my husband and me. It’s the first party I’ve been to alone in a long time. He was up visiting his mom who has just finished her chemo. That is another story.  I knew people at the party, but there is something about driving to a party alone when you’re not used to it that makes one feel unhinged. I start realizing the obvious that never made a difference to me when we were all drinking together in college. They make more money than we do, work in biotech or for the city and throw the kind of birthday parties that hire private bartenders and have dj’s and Thai buffet catering.  Our birthdays usually involve a split tab with a few friends, burgers, and maybe bbq on the back patio if we’re going all out.  All the wives and girlfriends wear sequins, designer dresses with plunging necklines, fantastic high shoes, smokey makeup around the eyes.  I’m in jeans and a dressy cotton tank top from Target, coming from a friend’s baby shower. I stuffed my high heels in my purse all day and bust them out right before going to the party, putting my stinky sandals at the bottom of my bag, where they won’t be seen.  The bartender–their hired help–likes me and we immediately strike up a conversation.  She compliments me on my jeans because they were flattering toward the curvy and asked me where I got them so she could find a pair. Oh these old things? 13 dollars at the clearance section at the Ross in Emeryville, I throw in.

Oh, I used to live in the Bay Area. Did you come all the way down here for this party?

I explained how I don’t really know the birthday girl well, but like her well enough, and that I’m here for my mom, her cancer and the whole story. Blurting it all out, unaware if I am scaring her away or not. But she is a captive audience because we are waiting in line for the bathroom and the person in front of us is taking forever, and I’ve had a glass of wine so…  We are in this fantastic home with brand new hardwood floors and a living room overlooking the glittering downtown LA skyline. I feel like I must sound pathetic to her.

OMG! That’s exactly why I’m here, she says.  She explains the whole situation. She moved down to help her dad who had bladder cancer and is now in complete remission. That’s the exact same reason I moved here. I wasn’t always a bartender and a cocktail waitress you know…she said. I used to have a high-powered career in advertising in the City and I was a dj at night. Now I cocktail and bartend because I had to leave my job to take care of my dad and now he’s okay. Complete remission, and he quit drinking and found a new career as a pre-school teacher.

Random Kind Stranger #3

Last month, at Trader Joe’s on Hawthorne Blvd, I run into a guy who was talking himself out of buying something fattening. I hear him say under his breath that his trainer would kill him for eating the thing he was picking up and trying to talk himself out of buying it. It’s one of those pre-made salami and cheese wraps.  (I was considering it healthy because it was in a wrap and I always feel cheated when it’s in a wrap and not delicious bread–so for me it was a sacrifice).  I was also about to pick up the same thing.  We get into talking by the carrot isle and we stay there for 45 minutes. He mentions somehow that he was  taking care of his mom who just finished her chemo treatments for some kind of cancer and he started giving me tips on foods for people going through chemo and anti-nausea remedies. We were the same age.  I think the universe is putting these people in my path on purpose, but I’m not sure why.

Kind Person #4

An old friend who I grew up with in the Greek community, Steve, who is a cop now, drove my mom and I to her 3rd chemo. apartment on Monday. I know what you are going though, he said, well…I don’t know exactly, but I have known 8 people who have had cancer in the past few years.  He gets it. When he talks about the friends of his he has driven to chemo, he is also tactful to avoid talking about the fact that they had died, and I appreciate this. I would do this too, knowing what it’s like to actually be the family member.

Things not to say to a person who is fighting cancer (or their family members)

People come up to me all the time and tell me stories about people they know who have died and how awful it got in the end. This one woman who is like 60 told me at a poetry reading that watching her father die was really a gift and I had to interrupt her and say, look lady, you are hella older than me. Your dad probably died of old age. That’s really not the same. My mom isn’t going to die, alright? I snapped at her.

Oh, I didn’t mean it that way, she quickly recovered.

People who actually have somebody close to them who have died, know better than to do this.

Just cut em both off, random Greek people say to my mom, one month after the diagnosis the one time we go to the Greek church. Don’t worry, get the cancer and they make a tomahawk gesture in the hair with their hands.  Do people go up to men with testicular cancer and say the same thing? Just cut em both off? We have since stopped going to church because too many people come up to us wishing us well and spilling their pain and it’s just too overwhelming for us.

I don’t think that people understand that they are being weird when they say these kind of wild things.

Other people–friends I have known for years–shrug off what I am going through by saying, it’s just breast cancer, it’s not a death sentence you know, and the good news is there is a 98% cure rate as if I’m over-reacting about the whole thing. Well, I have news for you people, the 98% cure rate stuff is a very nice myth. Breast cancer is cancer. It has different rates of survival depending on the staging, age, lifestyle, hormonal receptors, etc. It’s not so cut and dry. You can’t just say 98% cure rate and feel like you are taking it away for me, making it better, so you don’t have to feel bad, etc. It doesn’t make it better.

Others of my friends–my longtime friends, my closest friends– who don’t want to descend from their cloud of happiness to be with the wretched little me say things like, “That’s almost as much as what I’m going through with my crazy job, life, husband, etc. I’m just so busy and I’m working. At least you aren’t working.” I would rather work ten thankless jobs than be dealing with this, is the one-line zinger that I didn’t think of until now.

Then there’s the famous one-liner from another friend: You are the strongest person I know, Alex. You’ll get through this. I know you will. It’s you.” As if this gives them permission to drop me. Because I’m somehow strong.

Another friend–who we took in for four months to live with us when she lost her job–who is a scientist, specializing in cancer research–wouldn’t respond to my phone calls or emails and finally said look I’m so busy presenting at these international conferences and I don’t know anything about breast cancer anyway, so don’t ask me.

My birthday is in a few days. I guess I’m just bitter.

Here is my brief insecure birthday whine:Nobody wants to come out with us to my birthday dinner and drinks in Hermosa on Saturday night except for my husband and two friends whose arms I have twisted. At least somebody is coming out with us, so I can feel normal for a day.

At times, I am feeling totally bitter and irritated at anybody who happens to be blindly happy for no fucking reason. FUck you. I want to say to them and throw darts into the little fantasy balloon of their lives. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Even though–I secretly wish that this was me and that I was clinking a martini glass with 100 people toasting to my honor and my perfectly healthy mom and dad there and my husband proclaiming his love for me on the microphone in front of all my best friends, and a dj and an open bar with designer clothes, carefree smiles, etc. A birthday cake with 31 candles on it and my nearest and dearest singing to me in unison and being taken away on an elephant while being fanned with palm fronds by hot bare-chested men, a 2-million dollar book contrast with movie rights optioned out and Angelina Jolie playing me in the made-for-tv movie of my life, I’ll keep these little sick thoughts to myself.

I feel like my whole life–which I’ve been waiting to start–is really just idling. I feel like I’m too old for this shit.

When will it all end? Not life. I like life and all the sensual pleasure of existence.  I love all the beauty of taste, touch, sight and smell. But when will all this shit end?
Not any time soon, I guess. Just have to keep steady and, oh yeah, breathe.

Last thing I listened to as I finish this post: The White Stripes – We\’re Going To Be Friends

Matala at sunset, 2006

My last post was a little bit negative. I know that negativity breeds more negativity.  But, part of being 30 means, I do not take shit. I’ve sort of starting invoking this idea and name over and over again. It reminds me of the beginning of a Fela Kuti song “you give me shit; I give you shit,” then a jumble of bass and drums and guitar, with horns churning to an afro-funk rhythm .

The thought of a Monday morning ahead of me breeds nervousness and anxiety. I have not prepared for my classes like I told myself I would. I have not finished all the things on my checklist and I am behind a little bit. Yes, I really need a vacation.

We can’t go away this summer. We are on a budget with a brief staycation.  But, I am taking most of the summer off to write. I found a way to make money to support all this free time, or errr….it found me.  And, now I have no excuses.

I am taking the summer. To finish up loose ends of a big project I have been working on.  (If you must know, it’s my novel. I feel sort of poncey for even saying “my novel” at all.)  Every time I think of it, I get nervous. I think: what will I do if it doesn’t work out? If I can’t finish? If I mess up? If I can’t pull through? If I disappoint myself. I know this is kind of crazythinking. It’s a small little piece of self-time that I have allowed myself. This post is all I, I, I.  Sorry for the solipsism, but I am so close to finishing this project, I can taste it.  And, why, then, does this scare me?

As an artist, sometimes the world can get you down. It seems like everything is geared toward making money and filling up all the empty spaces with things and consumerism and fast-track.  Working and working and working, even if it is meaningful and usually fulfilling work, like teaching, can become a burden.  People are always expecting things of me. I am always late on some project, or a batch of papers or a book order. There is always a really long to-do list that never gets totally done.  Not to mention–the horrible realities of budget cuts, cut-throat jockeying for position of being a grad. student, then again as an adjunct professor, random firings of administrators, not to mention all the obligations brought about by engaging in protests, organizing and resistance against said budget cuts.  Everything–even positive statements of community–like the budget cuts protests– drains my energy.

In my work life, I’ve tried to slowly build a sense of respect by doing my best and putting in some good old-fashioned hard work, and I’ve tried to be humble and learn my craft as a teacher.  There was a time when I thought I would never, of all things in the world, become, in my life, world without end, a teacher. Maybe that’s what makes me one. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I chose this profession as a side to my writing.  But at the same time, teaching has been good to me.  It has kept me reading and discussing good books, it has given me something positive to bring to the world.  It has kept me fed and clothed and it has given me a kind of small status in the world.

Sometimes teaching can get so big, so over-encompassing that it bubbles over and takes up my creative energies that I could be spending on making art. I am constantly nurturing others and not being nurtured by a teacher in my own writing. I am at a strange predicament in my career as a writer. I haven’t finished anything major yet, but I feel like I don’t benefit from being a student of writing anymore.  But I know that if I don’t give up, I will finish.  Soon. Soon. I keep saying soon.

It’s times like these when one needs to retreat and release and just draw inward towards self. I’m sure other teacher/writers know what I’m talking about. I know first hand that teaching can take over a person’s life.

At this point in the semester I feel like a hamster fiendishly running on a wheel.  I want the rebirth of this blog to be the end of that.  I need to let go. I don’t want my work as a teacher to consume me to the point where all my creative energy gets directed towards that. So, I am hereby stopping the flow. Creativity, I declare of you. Come back! Redirect yourself towards selfish navel-gazing wonderful internally focused craft of an artist.  Flow like water to the part of the soul that must create something and don’t let the semester eat me away.  Even if the rest of the world crumbles down around me, give me peace in my creative process so I can get this project done. Let the rest of the world around me not crumble down, give it strength, balance, and support. So I can enjoy myself and give myself up to the sensuous moment of creation, so that I can write till the sunset of my days.

To all my creative people: never give up on yourself or you art. Sing your song. Drum your drum. Life is only worth living if you can enjoy yourself along the way. Most of life is spent becoming.

He called our house while I was still on the way home and talked to my husband, in a shaky, pained voice. He really did kind of leave us in the lurch with something, and my grandmother’s tenants have had no shower head for two days and he didn’t tell us he was going to go that route and now they’re pissed and sending me nasty, kind of uppity emails and phone calls, flaying their rights around. I was right to be upset with our plumber for not showing up today when he had promised, but now I feel bad about screaming at him via voicemail and saying “This is unacceptable” in a really bitchy tone into speaker phone while in gridlock traffic on the Bay Bridge. I also accused him of keeping us on the back burner because we weren’t one of his richer clients.

I have to stay here tomorrow when he comes and say sorry. At the moment, I am not sorry, but I want to be. I should really let it go, but, here it is 1:23 in the morning, and I still can’t sleep. I know it’s because I let my temper get the better of me…again.  Sometimes my bad temper scares people when they have seen only my good side.

Our plumber is an ex-fighter, a huge, muscular, former boxing champion and I was able to insult him to the point of humiliation. He also has confided in me that he has anger management issues. But because he is a big strong guy, he kicks people’s asses, I just yell at them and say just the right mean thing to break them.

I feel like a total douche.

It wasn’t just that I was mad at him. I was mad that this plumbing problem keeps happening, I was mad at the entitled messages that my grandmother’s tenants, two twenty-something bankers and one type-A chemistry teacher who expect perfection sent me, I was mad that I have to manage their apartment, I was mad that I have to grade papers all day tomorrow, I was mad that these writers I know were  dismissive of me, I was mad that I have all these responsibilities when all I want to do is write, I was mad that I didn’t eat anything until 5pm tonight, when I pulled over before getting on the freeway and scarfed a tuna sandwich, I was mad that it took me 30 minutes to exit the parking structure at work because of an accident right outside and rush hour, I was mad that I let a student guilt-trip me into making free photocopies for her when I wanted to go home, I was mad that the 50-year-old work-study student who works for the English department refuses to get out of my chair when I need to meet with students, then was rude to me in front of all the other colleagues, I was mad that the secretaries at my college turned their noses up at my student when she tried to make conversation in the elevator, I was mad that the administrators turn their frowning gazes to the corner of the wall  to avoid making eye-contact with me in the same elevator because they think I am a student. I was mad overall. I’m a bitch with a bad temper, and look out. I am now 30.

The only person I was not mad at today was my husband, who understands about my temper and who tried to explain my temper to the plumber, who was like get your woman in order, man. Ted and I laughed over that idea together over tacos. Ted was nice to me anyway even though he had to listen to our plumber talk for fifteen minutes about how much my voicemail had hurt his feelings and diplomatically console him on the phone. Everybody else in the world is on my shit-list except for Ted. He made me dinner and then watched my favorite show with me.

I keep struggling with my bad temper. Maybe one day, I’ll learn to be more like Ted and let it all go.

A writer friend who lives in the Bay Area told me that she was worried that she and her husband could not afford the 20 + grand a year per kid that it would cost to send her two children into private schools in the Bay Area. Her children’s ages? 3 and 6 months.

They are nowhere near the school age, yet this young mom feels the pressure that many middle class professionals in the Bay Area feel: Should I put my kids in a private school because the public schools will turn them into cockroaches, or should I let them turn into cockroaches on their own? “Hey, I went to public schools from age 5 to age 24,” I said, trying to console her, but when she got  strangely quiet, I thought that maybe I wasn’t the best example.

The problem with private K-12 education is–it porports to be better than public school. But what are you really getting for all that money except for excellently tended grounds, ionic columns, and an experience of social isolation based on socio-economic class?  What does it really do for the kids except for shelter them from the rest of society and teach them to be entitled?

It probably didn’t help that my one experience as a student at a private school was in graduate school which caused me to come home and pass out in my unmade bed every night like a narcoleptic after being stressed out by all the competitive bullshit.

Believe it or not, I was actually taken aside and told in the cafeteria to start dressing better by two of my classmates. I was told to wear Prada during my critiques by these women, because they felt like if I wore Prada, at least I would feel strong and not collapse into a bubble of tears after the fellow students in my class told me that my story about my family’s historic village was crappy, or that they just couldn’t stand my main character who was a thinly veiled autobiography.  ”What’s Prada? Can you get it at Ross?” I asked.  The whole time I was at a private school, I felt like most of the people didn’t get me.

But, my professors at the public college I attended were prestigious, and in many ways more accessible than the professors I had at my private graduate school and my classmates from public college all have jobs and are doing something interesting. Though, to talk to some of the young undergrads at the private school I went to, you’d think that they were paying all that money to learn from Socrates himself.

I’m not really against the idea of going to a private school for college, and I could see many reasons why somebody would choose one.  Since UC tuition is through the roof now, maybe private schools are really not that much more. But  I think any middle-class parent should not choose private schools for their children aged 5-18.

So, what should we public school advocates say to our private school leaning friends as they fret over whether they can afford to cough up half a million bucks to send two kids to private schools for their entire childhood?

When you send your children to school, basically the main lesson they are supposed to learn is how to be citizens of society. When you send them to a private elementary, jr. high or high school, you are turning a willful blind eye to 88% of America. You are teaching them to be elitists, to be entitled, to have servants, to demand service, and you are not teaching them how to be a citizen of society, but in effect removing them from any perceived unsavory elements and you are constantly forced to buy into the fact that people with money are safer, that people with money have better schools, and that people with money never have enough money, because if you are the family like my friend’s who are struggling and can’t really afford to put your kids in private school, you are saying to yourself and your children that you are not as good as the people with more money than you. You will chase the money and you will teach them to chase the money the rest of their lives, and it will never end.

That will be what breaks the civil society apart, not terrorism, or economic collapse. If anything will kill the American Dream, it will be the crumbling of the socialized education which has been a cornerstone of the American Dream since the beginning, and as you opt out of public school, so will you opt out of the free municipal service that you pay taxes to support.  And when savvy parents who are educated and intelligent like you pull your kids out, heaven help public schools, because the poor and the downtrodden don’t have the resources to fight for their kids that the educated middle class parents do and that could do away with democracy itself.

That’s why it makes me so sad when I see the horrible budget cuts that are being imposed on public schools in California and all over the country. It’s threatening the essence of our ability to believe in ourselves.

Do you ever wonder, if you were to die all of a sudden, what would your life be worth?  If you were to die slowly, say, of cancer, like my writer friend did last October, would you write like your life depended on it?

I met a kindred soul in Leila Abu-Saba, author of Dove’s Eye View.  I have known her since my MFA program at Mills College. We were classmates. Sometimes we disagreed on things, other times we dished back and forth, other times we shared intimate details of our lives and histories. Because I was blogging anonymously and so was she (She had a secret blog that has since been taken down in addition to her public one), we were able to really share personal information. Then things got in the way.  We both ended up falling out of each other’s lives, and we got busy with life obligations, etc.  At one point, we each thought the other person didn’t like them.  We didn’t realize that we were both wrong until much later.

I visited her on her deathbed in the hospital a few months ago.  She was all alone at the top floor of UCSF medical center. It was dark and she was scared.  I brought her this special holy oil from the Holy Virgin Cathedral in San Francisco that I had.  I didn’t know she was dying. I knew she had been sick.  I decided to contact her and ask me if she wanted me to bring it.  Bring it! She said.   She opened up her hospital gown and said to put it on her scars.  I did. I rubbed the oil on them with my finger, all over her abdomen and we chanted prayers. Her body looked like it was beat up from the inside out.  Her scars were huge.   Then, I went back to see her in the hospital the next week because she woke up at five in the morning and wanted me to bring a priest. I didn’t know how I was going to get a priest there, but somehow he showed up.  He sang to her in four languages and wrapped her in the purple silken mantle of a saint and anointed her with holy oil from three different monasteries, one from a shrine in Syria that she had a connection to.  Her whole family was around her then and watched the beautiful and sad and happy and peaceful ceremony.

The first time I went to visit her, late at night, when she was alone, she had asked me to hug her and I did.I was afraid to break her fragile bones.  Then she said, “If I get better, can we become better friends?” or maybe it was “I wish we could have been better friends.” I was afraid deep down that she wasn’t going to get better.  I said something wise that I never usually say: I said, In this moment, Leila, we are perfect friends.  And nothing else matters between now and then…because the universe is infinite and this moment our friendship is perfection and our spirits and our hearts will always be friends.”

I am glad I said that, but I also feel like I might have lost the chance to really let her know how similar we really were. But, maybe she had known all along.

I told her that I was starting this blog and that I was finally going to stop being anonymous.  So, I guess, I have to keep good on my declaration. She cheered me on. Then she prayed for me.  For my life to be peaceful and for my writing to be successful.  She even offered me food and something to drink.

One thing I am proud of her for was what she did in her last months on this earth is: she wrote her heart out. She wrote every moment as if it was her last. She never gave up and she never believed she would die. Two days before she died, her former professor and a mutual classmate offered to edit and publish her book for her if she could not go on living.  On her last lucid day, she heard the good news.  I heard that she couldn’t even hold the phone to her ear but she was happy inside.  I’m crying but I have no tears, she whispered to our classmate, Sara.

When I went to see her in the hospital the first time, when she was all alone on the 14th floor, she told me that I was beautiful and full of life and breathed me in as I hugged her. I felt guilty for being young and healthy. But I also felt like the future that is unfolding in front of me for whatever length of time is a tremendous gift and I made a promise to the universe then to be real, to be myself and to love people.  We even talked about the craft of being a writer.  She felt sad to be dying, and one of the reasons was that she was going to have to stop writing and she hadn’t yet published her novel.  As a writer, I totally get that feeling.

When I saw her the second time, I hugged her more greedily, knowing that it was probably going to be the last time, now wholeheartedly invested in being her friend. I didn’t hold back anything in that hug that I held back in life.  I was honored that she let me be so close to her in her last moments. I think it was because she had been praying for somebody to come with holy oil and then I called out of the blue. She had been anointed with oil by a nun in a cave in Syria and was hoping for the same thing, but gave almost gave up, thinking, where on earth am I going to get such a far out thing?  And then it showed up, it had been right next to her all along.

I’m not a holy moly person. I don’t believe that the religion I grew up with is superior to other people’s way of life, and I think that anybody can find a way to the divine.  I am not a very worthy  ambassador of faith.  But somehow, I was strangely called upon in this moment, and the holy oil is the only thing I really knew how to bring. It was the thing that my culture has used to comfort itself in its most dire moments.  It’s a culture that I shared with her since we were from the same general part of the world with similar religious traditions.

She died at 7:15 on Thursday night, the same exact moment that there was a service in the Russian Orthodox Holy Virgin Cathedral in San Francisco.    I never got a chance to tell her about the service, but I thought she would like it because she liked byzantine icons. It’s a Russian church and it hosted for the first time outside of Russia a byzantine icon of the Mother of God that is known for it’s miracles: Namely, softening hardened hearts.

Independently, I heard from Sara online that she felt like her heart had been “unfrozen” by all the love she had been receiving from family and friends.

I told her that I was restarting this blog and that I was finally going to go public with it, to be seen by the world, instead of hiding in the shadows.  So, I guess, I have to keep good on my declaration.

Leila, wherever the cosmic dust of the universe has taken you, may your memory be eternal.  You were the real, deal, girl.  You have my utmost respect.

Your friend,

Alexandra K.

I dreamt I was at an English Dept. meeting at the school where I teach, the same one we have at the beginning of each semester to discuss the semester’s business and of all things,  my blog came up as a subject of discussion on the agenda. Then I dreamt that my boss said that she had been reading it eagerly and had been an avid follower of it for years. Then different coworkers, some I get along with and some I find to be difficult, also brightly looked up from their agenda items and yessed and ummhmm’d in agreement.  I felt like everybody thought I was special and important. And isn’t that what we all want people to feel about us? That we are special and important and that our ideas matter?  I know I am just a lowly part-time worker/ employee, and I am a petite in stature young woman who often gets spoken down to and/or discredited and or overlooked. But, for once, in my dreams, where I can construct my own world, I was important and people were listening to me. And even if I get rejected from the outside world, and the artistic and academic powers that be prefer to bestow accolades upon others in reality, even if my some of my coworkers borrow my ideas about teaching or writing sometimes and then act like they was their own, maybe, at least in my dreams, I am intelligent and worth following and reading about.

And at least in my dreams, I get respect.

Just a few more minutes, I told myself in the post-midnight glare of internet search reverie/addiction and I had to read on.  Then it got kind of strange. I started to feel a kind of fascination for all the candidates sort of akin to the way one feels fascination for cat ladies who live alone in their apartment and sip tea on their mildewed slip-covered sofas and wear strange, dusty hats.  I read on.

Here is my take on things.

The fiction writers didn’t identify themselves, or perhaps cloaked their identity by posing as other genres. People with both PhD’s and MFA’s seemed disappointed that nobody would hire them.   One guy sent out 15 applications to 15 schools and got rejected from all 15 schools. Other people got partial interviews but no takers yet. Some people were looking for jobs with 6 published books and an MFA.  The creative non-fiction writers seemed to be whining in places and the poets kept talking about “professionalism” and this place called MLA where they kept talking about their interviews. I assume this means that they are all going to the Modern Language Association conference and interviewing?  This is something you’d think they’d have explained to us in my MFA program, or maybe they did and I was so busy working 3 jobs that I didn’t pay attention.  Or maybe they didn’t think we were really good enough to get these kinds of jobs, or they were fatalistic and believed there were no jobs, so they saved us the heartache. Who knows.

Then I surfed into  a conversation about the proper attire for a job interview for a creative writing position. The consensus among the professional poets was that one should wear a suit and that it should be black, and a have a briefcase, which should also be black and made of leather, and that one should also have shoes that were not considered “grad-studenty.”  Academic black, somebody chimed in. Then a single objector claimed that he went to this proverbial MLA interview place and the people in the suits all seemed nervous and kept to themselves. Somebody also said that women should wear black pants suits unless that you are fat, in which case you could get away with a skirt and cardigan. Then some lady who claims to have served on several hiring committees proclaimed that it didn’t matter what kind of shoes people wore and that all this talk was shameful, but she added that nice black wool slacks would of course be acceptable.  I could understand this kind of speculation going on about so many things, banking jobs, maybe even other academic jobs but with poets?  And self-proclaimed “professional poets”? What the hell?

I can’t imagine myself in a suit, playing this gig. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I CAN imagine myself in a suit–and I have two of them hanging in my closet–but I can’t imagine myself in a suit trying to do this. Maybe I would change my mind down the road, but I feel damn lucky to have my job now at a community college and I feel very grateful to hear the writing of the students in my basic writing class write about their dreams, real joys and disappointments and  struggles that come from the depths of their souls, than the sniveling drivel of grad students with no jobs who consider themselves to be artists and try to hide the fact that they drive a jag from the world–who I could get if I were to land a creative writing gig. How much more draining. I suppose I would rather teach at community college where I belong in order to stave off entering this horrid little world of academic fiefdoms for as long as I can. The people on this wiki kind of scare me.

I will always be the latchkey kid who walked home from school with the boys and stopped at the burger joint to play street fighter II and eat french fries and go hang out and look at black light posters in my friend’s garage.  When I was 15, I wanted to be a writer, and now I am one. I have a body of work that I have been crafting and honing in quasi-secret. My close friend from high school, M, wanted to be a wrestler and a professional fighter, and now he is one and he has the cut body to prove it. But he’s on the semi-pro circuit, always on the verge of big time, still striving, still trying, still fighting his way up. Funny how we become what we say we will. All these years later. Funny how we don’t see how difficult it is until we’ve already invested so much.  But that’s us: still fighting, charging, climbing, earnest and deserving, but possibly in a glutted market of strivers. Will we make the big time? Hope so.

I am a poet, fiction writer, journalist, blogger, wife, daughter, granddaughter, student, and teacher.   I’m a woman who stays up late enough to howl at the moon. I am the one who takes care of everybody else, but I’m no longer feeling bitter like it takes away something from me, or that it makes me less of a writer or a person. I am a woman who stands up for freedom and justice for the oppressed and the downtrodden. Like the Oracle in the temple of Apollo, I know who I am, and to all the people and institutions who laughed at me, who excluded me, who held me back over the years: that which does not kill us, only makes us stronger and for that I have you to thank. And for all of you people and institutions who have shown me support, generosity, kindness, acceptance over the years, I hold on to it as I grow into my own as an artist, writer and teacher and when in my best possible mind frame, I try to give as much of this abundance back into the world to other fledglings on their journey as I have been given.

I reemerge in full armor, Athena reborn.

Be you friend, acquaintance or foe, or somebody new, take note: Wildguppy is back in the blogosphere.

To all of you who dream, who yearn, who believe in striving to be your best against all odds, who hang out on the fringe and in the margins, I am your sister in the struggle between freedom and pain. This is my battle cry: Read it and refuse to weep.