OnlyNameLeft.Com

...and only 35 months to go. Sure. I can do this no problem. Because you know I only forgot to write some client work once this month (first time ever), was late with a case study (second time ever), spent more time with a laptop on my thighs than ever before (while billing less), and my desk looks like this:


Apparently, I had time for some solataire.

And yet, I'm very happy. If you want to read this month's essay, email me at hotmail and I'll send it to you. The books I read for September were:

Naked by David Sedaris

Truth Serum by Bernard Cooper

Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style by Virginia Tufte

Truth Serum ROCKED all kinds of ass. Should be required reading (Sally, it's perfect for your sex and culture class). Artful Sentences made my head explode.

For October, I'm reading:

In Pharaoh's Army by Tobias Wolff

Collected Essays of EB White

Burning Down The House by Charles Baxter

I sucessfully did not burn down my own house this month. Well, at least not literally.

Okay, here it is in writing. Please refer back to these instructions during times of confusion.

I go to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington where I am studying for a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction.

The program is called low-residency. This means I go to school once a year. In August. This means I will not go back to school until August, 2008.

I do, however, have to mail eight packets to my mentor this year. The packets include 10-20 pages of creative work and 10-15 pages of critical work. The critical work is based on the three books per month that I must read. Book reports, Judy calls 'em.

These packets are due on the 15th of each month. Do not disturb any further between the 10th and 15th of the month.

Yes, I get December off for good behavior.

Yes, I had to provide my mentor with a list of at least a few of the 24 books that I must read during these next eight months(over-achiever that I am, I provided a list of 12). In addition, I had to provide an outline as to what I thought I might write about this year. If you want the reading list, too, email me at one of the usual places.

Yes, I am freaking out and not quite on track. But, this is only the first week and I have had my in-laws here for the first four days.

Finally, the letters after my name will allow me to teach at a University level, feel smug in my graduate student-type status, and snarky at cocktail parties where I'll use big words that you'll have to go look up in the dictionary.

That is all.

In the old days we ate Top Ramen, typed on Smith Coronas, drank cheap beer (Rainier pounders), and listened to vinyl.

Now we have lacinato kale and yukon gold potatoes stir fried with fresh figs, some reduced fat pork sausage and chili peppers, laptop on couch, WiFi broadcasting 802.11a/b/g, Sapphire and tonic (just one, stop worrying), MP3 player scrolling through (in no particular order):

Billy Joel

The Cars

Big Head Todd and the Monsters

Izthak Perlman

Paul Van Dyk

Vanessa Mae

Madeline Peyroux

Cosy Sheridan

Random massage type music downloaded perfectly legally from Russia. I swear to you. It's legal. I swear Ani DiFranco wants the motherland to have her music before capitalistic pigs in America.

Los Tres Ases

Sister Morales

Ruthie Foster

That banjo guy. Um, what's his name, damnit, don't make me get up in look. You know him, everyone does, he's famous.

Damn, I'm glad I waited 20 years to go to graduate school.

I have to wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake. I am in a graduate writing program, in a genre that forces me to declare on the page what exactly I believe, what exactly I make of my life, my story.

And quite honestly, I often have no idea.

I hold onto Mary Clearman Blew’s idea of essay writing as a way of working toward meaning, figuring out in the end what exactly it is that you believe. I am not like some of my friends who spend time pondering big ideas – which is not to say that I am shallow, but rather that the big ideas often fall into my head all at once. So if you ask me, for instance, as my workshop did today, what exactly I think my essay on my father means, I can tell you that it is an examination of what happens to our relationships with our parents when they age. But if you asked me what the piece meant a year ago, I do not know that I would have been able to tell you. And so how can I keep writing new pieces, cranking them out month after month if I have no idea what the big questions are that I am trying to answer?

Quite honestly, I have no idea. I suppose essay or big collection, they’re both the same, a way to write toward meaning.

I skipped class this afternoon. My head too full from my earlier workshop critique. The comments were kind and generous, and I do believe -- finally -- that I am a good writer, that is to say, that I can put down words in such a way that is pleasing. Now, if I can create appropriate structure – or an appropriate container, thank you, Dr. Jung – in which to put these words, maybe I can become a better writer.

Remember when you lived in a dorm?

We’re in it now. Workshops, classes, craft talk, readings by faculty, late night drinking and chatting with both faculty and classmates.

I remember today what type of student I am and how I spent my undergraduate career. My mother, recently was surprised to learn that I rarely sit in the front of the class, but the truth is, I’m a reticent student. I am not always quick on my feet. I am opinionated, but unsure of those opinions. I am mortally afraid of looking stupid. And so I tend to watch and not participate. Except that I am well trained in the ways of workshop and the ways of consensus building and so I did manage to speak a bit – not enough to be the star of the class, but you know. And yet, several times already, I have been mistaken as faculty. Apparently, I carry more authority than I give myself.

Tonight, at the bar, er, I mean the Faculty House – where we congregate and drink and play pool and talk about ethno-poetics, the rise of the mediocre, the iambs of Greek poetry – I was surprised when two second year students walked up to me and said, “We need to talk with you about graphic novels.” And my first thought was, geesh, I’m not even spiking my hair this trip, what gave me away?

The last thing I learned today: My new prescription for my glasses is fabulous. I can see the board and everyone is so incredibly 3-D! Fantastico! Of course, when I look down at my notebook, it’s as if I’m looking through the wrong end of binoculars. Apparently the optometrist was not kidding when he suggested bifocals might be in order. I spent most of the day balancing my glasses on my prodigious forehead, pulling them down only when absolutely necessary. Oh, shut up, why don’t you. I like to think of it as charming and idiosyncratic.

Tomorrow’s Schedule:

7:00 – 8:00: Breakfast

8:30 – 9:30: Craft talk

10:00 – 12:00: Workshop

12:00 – 1:00: Lunch

1:00 – 1:45: First class: Form and the Duende in Contemporary Nonfiction

2:00 – 3:15: Second class: Digression as A Method of Reading and Writing Nonfiction

3:30 – 4:45: Third class: Second session of Dreaming Awake

5:00 – 6:00: Recording of my piece "Next Seven Exits" for the local NPR show, "River and Sound Review"

6:00 – 7:30: Group dinner (Fiesta Buffet!)

7:30 – 9:00: Faculty reading (Mary Clearman Blew and Adrianne Harun)

Today, the residency began officially. We met at 9:00 am for our orientation – what to expect from the mentorship, tips for how to build your first reading list (24 books in 8 months. My sister, upon hearing this said, “Oh my god, I haven’t read 24 books since college!”), what to expect when you go home and are alone again.

I tried to sit with different classmates at each event (Orientation, lunch, two readings, and dinner), to get a feel for people with whom I might click. My old fears came roaring back in almost immediately. The gregarious girls who seemed to laugh and whisper at inside jokes left me feeling stupid and outside. The smarty environmental lawyer made me feel like I had the vocabulary of a Neanderthal. The sporty spice on her second MFA (first is in theater) left me feeling like an under-achiever. Never mind the hour-long conversation about American literature with one of the program directors where I wracked my brain – who the hell wrote Pilgrim’s Progress? When does the concept of manifest destiny first show up in the literary canon?

I bought “An Incomplete Education: 3,684 Things You Should Have Learned but Probably Didn't” and intended to read before showing up for graduate school – as much as a refresher as for filling in my knowledge gaps (Come on, I have a liberal arts education from the Harvard of the West). It’s very well-written, but I didn’t really care about the government structure of Colombia (I know, I know, I should) or the difference between fission and fusion (Okay, duh! I do know the difference between splitting a nucleus versus combining ones; it’s just an example, people. Work with me, it’s late). The point is I feel dull and slow and terrified that I’m doing this – which must mean I’m on the right track, eh?

Tomorrow is a crazy day:

7:00 – 8:00: Breakfast

8:30 – 9:30: Craft talk

10:00 – 12:00: Workshop

12:00 – 1:00: Lunch

2:00 – 3:15: First class: How Nature Influenced the American Sense of Identity

3:30 – 4:45: Second class: Dreaming Awake (Yes, Barbara, that's right. No advance reading required.)

5:00 – 6:00: Group mediation or personal workout or personal breakdown. Your choice.

6:00 – 7:30: Group dinner (Barbequed Ribs! For those who’ve not done 9 months of sternal wound dressing changes)

7:30 – 9:00: Faculty readings (Jess Walter and Fleda Brown)

Until you come to a place like South Tacoma, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are abstractions, headlines in the New York Times, reasons – as if we needed any more – to further dislike the current administration. But here in South Tacoma, just one exit away from PLU, is McChord Air Force Base – home to the C-130 Hercules and the C-17 Globemaster III, the latter of which has been either taking off or landing every two minutes since 8:30pm.

It is the sound of war, concretizing all the headlines and sound bites in a way that most urban liberals can never understand. Flags wave from every doorway, yellow ribbons wrap around trees and lampposts, bouquets of flowers line the overpass between McChord and PLU – all of it for the men and women taking off and landing two miles from here. None of them making us safer from terrorists, but the sacrifice is nonetheless dear or valid. And I feel greatful that in this tiny pocket of hopelessness -- the per capita income for the base is $12,454 -- people find time to thank those who our government would send off to war. Every two minutes.

I arrived at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU) today at 2:00pm. Like a classic first day of school, things were a bit chaotic. We were supposed to be able to drive down to the front door of the dorm and unload, but apparently the university decided that a bunch of writers – genus unreliable alcoholics – were not trustworthy. “There are some younger people on campus and the safety office worried they’d be hit.” Um, because there are toddlers on campus?

Then there was the issue of the Lute card. The girl who took our digital picture was about 19 years old and angry as hell about it. Bill, a writer from Rochester was chastised for taking big steps toward the camera (“I can’t focus when you step so close. Take smaller steps. Please.), Pat (very unambiguously a woman) had the unmitigated gall to leave her Lute card at home. She somehow also got on the TSA’s “Do Not Fly” list, so the Lute card was the least of her worries. Not so for our “concierge.” “You’ll need to pay fifteen dollars and you don’t get a new picture. We use the one in the system.” I failed – apparently to stand still enough. “Look at my finger and quit moving,” our happy assistant barked as she tapped on the top of the camera. “if your picture is blurry, I’m not responsible. It’s your own fault for not standing still.”

PLU is very much in South Tacoma. This means it is in an area of biker bars, used car dealerships, and fast food restaurants. The university itself is clearly the ugly stepchild of the Northwest’s more aesthetically pleasing liberal arts universities – University of Puget Sound, ten miles and aesthetic light years away, Reed (all Gothic and Tudor like UPS), Lewis and Clark (a mix of modern and classic). Most of these building are 1960’s style architecture – squat with a mix of brick and stucco, and weird vertical windows. The only architectural detail of note are the doors.

Several of the doors have crosses on them! Crosses! On! The! Door! Not the stern, dour northern European type of crosses, either. But the pax, groovy, hippy Jesus kind of crosses. It's surprising, because as my friend David remarked, old Martin wasn't really known for his groove.

I've successfully hidden my wine in my room. As we've been reminded several times, PLU is a "dry" campus -- which is why you'd think they'd have let us drive right up to the dorm doorway. Or maybe not. Maybe they knew we were secreting away alcohol (and caffeine, and hundreds of dollars in Estee Lauder face products, a mere fifty in Aveda hair products). We met tonight as a group off campus -- well, across the street, actually -- so that we could have wine and beer with dinner. Everyone drank responsibly, sipping a single beer, or glass of wine. Of course, the workshop hasn't begun, yet. Give it time and we'll likely do our genus proud.

Oh. My. God.

I worked out today with Mike, the personal trainer I hired to help me become the biggest loser. Mike, who is like 28 but says "he's older and wiser" than he used to be. A child. An incredibly old school child who believes in free weights and sprint training.

He had me do Romanian dead lifts in order to work on e-centric contraction of my quads. I hate the Romanians. Death to Bolfa.

I did bench presses. The bar weighs 45 pounds! So he put 2.5 pounds of girly weight on the bar. I said, "Girly weight, huh?" He said, "You don't see any other women even attempting this, do you?" Ego saved.

I did lat pull downs and some torturous pull up exercise and that's when I realized that I will never have the butch body of my dreams. Not if it hurts like this. I'm girly and I accept this absolutely. To wit, I worked so hard with Mike that I sweated off all my Estee Lauder products and thought, “now that's just not right.”

From USA Today...

Wal-Mart Will Offer Faith-Based Action Figures

Beginning next month, Wal-Mart stores that sell a lot of Bibles will carry a line of faith-based toys from One2believe. They target parents who wants their kids to play with a Samson action figure, not Spider-Man. About 425 Wal-Mart stores nationwide will devote two feet of toy-aisle shelf space to the products, says Melissa O'Brien, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman.

The toys are based on biblical stories. For example, there's a set of 3-inch figures based on Daniel in the lion's den for about $7. A 12-inch talking Jesus doll is about $15. And 14-inch Samson or Goliath action figures are about $20. The toys target kids from preschool to age 12, and also are sold online at one2believe.com.

Religious products have become a multibillion-dollar business, and the Wal-Mart move comes as the industry targets a younger audience. Fox recently created FoxFaith, a 20th Century Fox unit to distribute family movies with Christian themes.

Read the whole story and see Jesus in action...