Ex. Huh. Lation. (In Which Alice Recalls She’s a Self-Powered Engine and Makes a Choice)
Hi.
Wasn’t dead; just down some rabbithole-thing, there. Just been busy learning a number of things. Here’s one: No, they were not cold and hard and mean at Number One Nonfiction program. In fact, not only do they have an amazing faculty: People who write regularly for magazines like Harpers, like the New York Times Sunday Magazine, magazines I want to write for, but those faculty members are also gosh darn cool. This is how I know this: They liked me. Funny how that works, huh? Had my head swirling and waltzing some Cinderella dance of the veiled promise of future agents and connections-

I was infatuated. Clearly, this was the place for me. Clearly, there was love there.

And then I checked out the price-tag on that big, wet kiss.

And then I plugged that into an online loan calculator. And fricking yowza and ouch. Spent the next week trying to see if I could scrounge funding from somewhere to go there. Became, how shall we say…a tad obsessed? A tad self-absorbed? A tad um, delusional?

But I’ve come down from that. Concluded it just won’t happen. This morning I called up School formerly known as Choice Number Two and you know what? Not so bad. In fact, I was reminded: pretty darn great. And located somewhere it’s not cloudy from October through April, either. And everyone I’ve talked to there is so gosh darn enthusiastic about the program, it’s nuts. And? Psssst-! They tell me I’ll have fun there. Fun? Writing? Wha-? Oh, yeah…

Sometimes I forget that small point: That when I write well, it’s my little secret garret; it’s more than fun; it has nothing to do with me and nothing to do with now; it’s better than chocolate and as good as sex and puts the same stupid, secret smile on my face when I’m all alone, hours later, thinking about it. And it’s been mine all my life and no matter where I go it will continue to be mine and – (gasp) – the point was supposed to be this: two or three years to write. Um, yeah? Remember that?

So off I go at the end of July not to Arizona, not to Pittsburgh or Massachusetts, but just several hours away to the coast, to a school at my favorite state. Two hours from my grandma and with a damn teaching assistantship to teach fricking Creative Writing, to boot. This is not a let-down. This is good. Good, good, good. No slush, no grey, no fears of never being able to eat again post-graduation.

Back in the world. Hello.

But today's question is...
Oh, Wolf Parade, why art thou so damn catchy???!

Square Meals
Today, I ate fake-healthy. Real healthy is fruit, vegetables, grains, meat and the like. Fake healthy is what I consumed: for breakfast, an Odwalla bar -I do not know how the hell you spell this, only that it’s one of those “healthy” bars meant for people with no time who want to feel good about themselves in an upwardly-mobile kind of way, and that it’s manufactured by the same friendly people who bring you Odwalla Juice. That being, Coca-cola. Right, so some prefabricated chewy Health Thing. Breakfast.

Then for lunch, I was, well, working through lunch as usual and so I called my colleague who goes to Chic Fil-a like, every single day for lunch, god bless ‘im (hey, it can’t be worse than my proclivity for the Amy’s Natural Bean and Cheese burritos three days out of five). I ask him what he’s getting and he says they have really good salads with grilled chicken and that This is his New Thing. Such salads are not something I’ve ever been especially fond of, but since I’ve been eating Mass Quantities of Crap lately, I said Sure. It can’t hurt to eat a salad for lunch, right? (Riiight?) Only, of course, it was a Fast Food salad, meaning iceberg lettuce with some cherry tomatoes and strips of dry chicken. Although it came with a packet of sunflower seeds, so as I sprinkled those on top, famished, I felt healthy. Fake healthy. Because then I drizzled the accompanying thick, goopy dressing on top. All these ingredients together? Not so good for you.

Then I was hungry all afternoon and at exactly 3:40, said to hell with it and bought a Little Debbie Oatmeal Sandwich cookie from the snack machine. Because, you know, it’s *oatmeal.* Which is so healthy.

*A note: All of the below written to the ridiculously sublime soundtrack that is Nina Nastasia’s The Blackened Air. Thank you, my great friend for this great present.

A History of Insomnia, Part Umpteen.
I will not force myself to go to bed before I’m tired tonight. Well, say, sleepy. I’ve been tired for the last week straight; Tossing till two or waking up at three and not falling asleep again and so getting up and trying to get something done and getting sleepy again and going back to sleep at four – and never, ever, no matter the circumstance - sleeping past 7:30. Unable. I actually sit upright, morning after morning, Groundhog’s Day-style, and look at the clock just as the numbers click seven-three-oh.

What fun. Mostly.
Last night Marshall hosted for me a nice birthday party with hot piñata action and a low country boil which, ahem, I cooked and am proud to say turned out well.

I believe this completely: that the entirety of good feeling one is able to garner from parties thrown for oneself is nothing more or less than the feeling of relief when a couple of hours have passed, you look around and realize your guests are happy. The first half hour or so is often an adjustment, for guests and host, to the fact that This is a Party, yes. You come in Here and We make-a-the-merry, now. And getting brand-new guests who don’t know one another to talk and feel comfortable. This was somewhat complicated last night by the fact that I had this major-league cooking project and it wasn’t my own house and the host, my Guy-I’m-Dating, is really rather shy and didn’t know a lot of these people. But after a while I finally stopped worrying about what my guests did and how they were and just started hanging out in the kitchen talking with whoever wandered back there and then the rest was fine. Hey, because you know what else your guests are besides guests? Grown-ups. So. One-half nerve-wracking and one-half fun made it somehow worthwhile.

What you hear
I hear advice from different people and thanks to all ya’ll who cared enough not to dismiss all this ramble-ation over MFA programs as simple self-absorption. Or to indulge it, at any rate. Thank you for giving me sweet, well-thought out advice, yes yes.

To a person like me, though - a person who’s both rotten at choosing and terrified about choosing wrong and ruining her one chance and to one who perhaps over-dramatizes such things and builds them and blows them up to eight times life-size: Such a person hears many things and takes them into consideration and files them away with what the warring factions of her own brain have to say. And then such a person finally only really listens to the someone who finally says that which makes her most relieved, which gets her off the hook. And so a very warm thank you to my MFA’ed friend who left me the nice message tonight.

I’ve Just Been Through the Love Blender! ! !*
The most brilliant thing I’ve heard in the past few days came from my mother. She told me that I’m at the point where I’m choosing among wallpaper patterns. I can’t really screw it up; I decided back at Sternbergers that these were the designs I liked best, but get ‘em home, and suddenly scalloped shells or abstract wavey things become life or death.

I should enjoy this. I’m somewhere I’ve never been before and possibly will not arrive at ever again, or at least for a long while: This moment of being courted not by one entity, but by four; four different MFA programs, all of whom want to know Where I Stand in my Decision Process, all of whom want to know, what are your questions? What are they? What? And act all surprised and miffed when I let on that I’m considering other programs with timetables that vary from theirs. They make sharp nasal exhalations and say Well, fine. Whatever. Just, call us, then. In the meantime, [cold voice] what other questions do you have?
So I ask one or two but then my mind goes blank which proves I was never any kind of journalist or decision-maker.

So, which is it?
Is it the midwestern school with the people who say, “Oh, Alice. We just love your work and all you do and might I mention you have a lovely phone voice plus you’re pretty. How do we know? We can just feel it,” like I’m Truman Capote and not just someone with the four essays I sent them plus the work on Small Publication’s website. Who insist that They’re the Program for me, no matter what my question is. Example:
Alice: Does your program teach any x-type of nonfiction? Because I’m really interested in that.
School: Oh, whatever we do, you know, I’m just certain that we are the perfect fit for you because you’re so neat and we are too.

Is it Fancy ‘n Cold, the place with the Name in Nonfiction, the place that won’t offer me an assistantship, seemingly because I should just be glad I got in? That shrugs and says, “We don’t care if you say yes or no. Because only 2 ½ people got into our fancyland program and 50 more are waitlisted, so if you decide to come then, yes, the connections here with Harpers and Jesus Christ could guarantee you Fancy Fame, but on the other hand, we coddle no one and it’s up to you to figure everything out while you’re here and don’t expect to actually receive an ounce of sympathy or support for the next two years, furthermore there is the distinct chance that a fellow student will actually cut your throat while you’re busy writing and guzzling Tums.”

Or is it the place whose director I totally hit it off with on a personal level on the phone? It doesn’t make sense to go somewhere because you’d like to have coffee with one guy.

And then there’s the Place Out West. And there’s Calexico-lovin’, Never-Been-West, romantic me. (except California. Whole different enchilada, and I flew.) “Ooh! Cowboy hats! Okay, I’ll go there,” a voice says.

And yes, I’m considering financial thises and thatses, and yes, I’m going over every little detail about who teaches where and yes, I’m getting the names of current students to talk with. And yes, yes and yes. But basically, it’s wallpaper time. And so, I’d like to open this up to you, dear reader. What do you think it should be? Where should Alice go? I await your sage wisdom. Please, comment below.

(*“Love Blender.” See Love is Hell: A Cartoon Book by Matt Groening. Copyright 1982-1986. Pg 2)

What You Wish For
A few years ago, I hated Atlanta.
I worked in a coffeeshop where most of the people I saw day in and out were customers who could afford to lay down three or five bucks every morning on some coffee and steamed milk, could afford to take fifteen minutes to stand around with neighbors and friends and chat and laugh and catch up, could afford this little world, this community paid for with this hot paper cup they grasped between their hands. I was jealous of them.

There were also those, yes, who swept in on their cellphones and swept out in their Miatas, who threw their bills down each day and barked out their orders or worse, waved their hands in a manner both impatient with and dismissive of the baristas who knew their drinks by memory. There were those who were rude or mean, and - worse somehow - there were those who were friendly, who would strike up conversations day after day. We became fond of them and felt the flower of friendship begin to spring up, a bud that never saw the light of day – doomed because, all things considered, there we were behind the counter, and there they were on the other side, and sooner or later all it came down to was whether we’d toasted the bagel well enough or whether the silver canister was out of half and half. There was nowhere for those friendships to go. They were stunted from the get-go.

I took that dynamic with our customers and the resulting Comrades-on-a-Lifeboat, Fuck-‘Em-All dynamic with my coworkers and, on four or five hours of sleep every night plus days spent on my feet eating muffins and drinking caffeinated beverages, I carried that outlook into the rest of my life. I was a bike rider in a world of shiny Cooper Minis that zoomed by too fast and splashed water on my legs and butt as I pedaled – me, a tattooed, tank-topped clerk with unshaven armpits, always buzzed or crashing from caffeine.

Who was also at odds with those lifeboat-comrades. The coworkers/friends/only people I ever really hung out with because they were the only ones who understood every detail of daily life. I was the girl who had gone to college - who had loved college - who respected authority and was shitty at poker and missed rules and health insurance and routine and talked with her parents for long stretches every week or two and got along quite well with all her kin. I felt patted-on-the-head and was patted on the head by coworkers who joked good-naturedly over Ambitious Alice and thought me naïve and sweet and a tad dizzy. And I had a boyfriend with whom I lived and fought over about money and loved madlymadly. And he was one of the lifeboat-comrades, which complicated matters. And we hated Atlanta and its car culture and its nouveau riche tackiness and one day he did something about it and left. And then things changed.

I started working full-time at Small Publication and left the coffeeshop. I started spending time with people who valued passionate careers and who weren’t afraid of trying for something they might fail at. And then I started popping into the coffeeshop a few days a week when I could afford it. I’d go to parties where I met people who did everything under the sun and made their homes here Atlanta. It wasn’t just the place they lived while they squirreled away money. They were writers and city planners and accountants and bartenders and cheese purveyors and ACLU lawyers and massage therapists and hardware store clerks and high school teachers and international fax technicians - and everyone had something to say and I joined a rock band and I learned to knit and I learned still more about this city and state as I wrote stories and interviewed people doing still more fascinating things here in this town. I went jogging and bike riding on weekends along trails that run through town and hiked Stone Mountain. I started dating a very, very sweet man. I started spending more time with The Best Nieces in the World. I started participating in activities at my Unitarian church.

Now, all of a sudden, I have the opportunity to leave. I found out Friday I got into one of the top nonfiction MFA programs in the country at the University of Pittsburgh, and suddenly, it’s real; it’s a voice and it’s saying You can go. It’s a ticket.

And I will go. I’ll take it. I’ll either go there or to one of my other top choices; I’ll figure it out as responses continue to trickle in. But now it’s not so easy.

Today I had lunch with a guy with StoryCorps, an amazing oral history project that, err, Small Publication is hosting during its stay here in Atlanta, and I was telling him about The Beltline project and about a thousand-one quirky, cool things here in and around Atlanta to make sure he does before he leaves, and I was a god damned motormouth; a bouncy, bubbly – possibly a bit dizzy-sounding – motormouth. Someone who sounded like she really loved her town. Her town.