Have No Fear

I'll be back to blogging soon!

As soon as I dig out of everything that's accumulated in my life, I'll be on here regularly.

Aunt LaReta- I really appreciate the email about missing my writing on here.  It was inspiring.  :)

Lots of exciting things to come, stick around!

  <3 Karly

MFA Adventures- Day 2

            It took me over an hour to make a twenty-minute drive today.  Traffic had nothing to do with it.  Turns out, Venice blocks every important road in town for a huge group of runners and bikers.  As I’ve mentioned, my GPS has seen better days.  As I cruised down my normal one-way street, looking left at every cross street, I saw nothing but yellow tap and orange roadblocks.  I reached the next large crossroad to meet only more yellow tap and orange roadblocks.  Luckily, a cop guarded that intersection.

            I got out of my car, “What can I do to get out of here?”   

            The Hispanic man answered.  I, of course, had no idea what he said.

            “I’m sorry, what street is open?”

            “Dewey,” he said, I thought.  “Go back.”

            “Go the wrong way down the one way,” I asked.

            “Yes,” he pointed, “other way.”

            “There’s no such street as ‘Dewey’,” Walt said, from the other end of the phone line.

            “He said Dewey,” I insisted.

            “There’s a Dudley Street,” he said.

            I agreed that maybe he was right.  I reached Dudley and when it reached my main street that I needed, it was blocked as well.  My hope dwindled and my lip quivered.

            I turned down the next one way toward my main street, it looked clear.  An Asian woman shouted at me.  I couldn’t hold the tears back any longer.  I burst out in loud, gasping sobs.

            “Are you crying?” Walt asked.

            “Yes!” I heaved.  “I’m lost.  And a lady just yelled at me.  And I just want to go back to my apartment and wait until this stupid running thing is over.”

            The Asian woman seemed to be approaching my car.

            “The lady who yelled at me it walking toward my car.  I need to turn around.”

            “Gross,” she yelled, “Gross is open.”

            “Gross is open,” I told Walt.  “Who names a street ‘Gross’?”

            “Rose,” Walt said.  “Rose is the next street.” 

            I pulled up to the next roadblock; the cop guarding the intersection pretended not to see me.

            “How do I get out of here?”  I asked.  “I need to get to the 90.”

            “I’ll let you through here,” he said, lifting the yellow tape.

            That helped me cross my main street that I needed to cross, but I still didn’t know where I was, I’d been driving for twenty minutes and nothing looked familiar.

            Finally, I flipped a U-Turn to try to make my way back to my apartment, I’d just miss the first lecture of the day.  A cop pulled behind me in an amazing feat of car gymnastics.  On flipped the lights.  I tossed my phone into my cup holder, hoping the cop hadn’t seen my phone.

            The cop rolled down her window.  I’m used to male cops.  They don’t make me feel like I’m a wimp for wanting to be a writer, not a female firefighter or police officer.

            “The only reason I’m not giving you a ticket is because I don’t have time,” she said.

            “I’m really lost!” I exploded, more of the sobs I couldn’t control.

            “Then you should pull over and get directions,” she said.  “Where are you trying to go?”

            “The 90,” I said, holding my breath.

            “Just get on Lincoln,” she said.

            “I can find Lincoln!” I’d reached the point of no return.  I was now publicly sobbing to a local cop.  I’d been searching for Lincoln for thirty minutes.

            “You can’t be talking on your phone,” she said.  “You’ll hit a pedestrian.”

            I nodded frantically.  If I were going to hit a pedestrian, I’d do it whether I had one hand, two hands, or five hands on the wheel.

            She sighed and looked ahead to the street, “Follow me.”

            I followed her, and in a few turns, she had me on the street that I needed to enter the freeway.  She pulled up beside me and yelled through her open window, “The 90 is straight ahead.”  I didn’t understand exactly how shouting with her across car windows was safer than me talking on my cell phone, but I was grateful, nonetheless.

            I pulled into the parking garage, still breathing and ten minutes before the first lecture was set to begin.  Allegrophobia, for the win, again.

           

            After a nightmarish start to the day, things went great.

            The first lecture of the day was about the American road novel and how writers can explore the idea of self-discovery through a road narrative.  She offered tons of self-discovery novel recommendations with the road as a central theme and mapped a diagram of the process that the character evolved through.

            The next lecture was well-attended, shocking even the professor.  “Teaching Academic Writing,” he opened, “why are you all here?”

            Everyone joked that we all needed back-up plans for writing.  We’d need to get jobs eventually.  The detailed the “conversation” that’d been happening in the education circles since the 1950s and how thinking had evolved since then.

            The first of Lunchtime Student Readings was today at lunch.  I’m pretty bummed that I didn’t get on the list to read this term, but I’ll be here four more times, so the opportunity should come up.

            This afternoon ushered in panel conversations by an instructor from each of the genres about using non-linear constructions to tell a traditional narrative.  Loved it.

            Tobias Wolff guest lectured for us today.  He’s an amazing writer who doesn’t contain his talent to one genre or one format, writing short stories, novels, memoir, and a bit of poetry, I think.  He revealed a lot of his secrets and gave us all kinds of tips for various genres through explaining how he worked through any problems that he encountered and reassured us by admitting that nothing he writes happens easily.

            The night wrapped up with a graduating student group of readings and a reading by Tobias Wolff, “Her Dog” and “Bullet in the Brain.”

            To wrap up an almost-perfect day, I found my way home and used the same combination of roads as I did last night, a first for the trip.  Great day, minus the surprise marathon roadblocks this morning, of course.

            

MFA Adventures- Day 1

            Day One was fabulous!  Because of my fear of being late, (allegrophobia is the fad non-clinically-approved word for it) I was an hour and a half early for the first lecture today.  Yep.  I typed out hour-and-a-half to make sure the full weight of it was obvious.  That’s twice the length of the first lecture that I’d prepared to attend.  This being unthinkably early got me a seat in the second row though.  Late-comers sat on the floor, leaned against walls, and ended up having to write on white-boards for the presenter because they were in his way.  Ha!  Allegrophobia for personal gain, for the win.

            As part of the requirements for graduation, students in their final term give a fifty-minute lecture about a topic that usually goes hand-in-hand with their final manuscript/thesis.  This morning’s topic was how to write convincing and vulnerable humiliating scenes in creative non-fiction.  I was most excited about this lecture over anything in the residency guide, for obvious reasons.  I can’t kill my own spiders, spend more time talking to my dogs than most humans, and I can’t navigate myself out of a paper bag.  Humiliating, yes.  Humorous, usually.

            The next senior lecture was terrifying.  The only person brave enough to participate was another student in his final term (Heliotropes, they’re called.  Each class is named after a tree.)  Here’s the title of the second lecture I attended:  Fabular Histories: Metahistorical Romance's Challenge to Historiology and Expansion of Historical Fiction.  He joked that he was competing for the lecture with the longest title.  If that were a real thing, he’d have won.  He explained (for most of the time) the technicalities of what it takes to create historical fiction and the difference between historical fiction and a “period piece”.  Turns out, historical fiction is only created if the main character’s entire being is effected by the events of the time.  A period piece occurs when the person is living a life and just happens to be living in the dark ages or something.  A discussion broke out in the last fifteen minutes about how much fiction can be put into historical fiction and the conversation went from issues with ghosts to religious visions to dragons, an amazing progression, I must admit.

            I met my “Buddy”, a fellow creative non-fictioner for lunch and flowed from orientation to orientation to workshop orientation in the afternoon.  YC really prepared me for this experience more than I could have ever imagined.  Although I haven’t developed as many workshop pet peeves as the seasoned veterans of the AULA workshops, but I kept up with the vocabulary and the direction that I hoped I could take my work.  Needless to say, I felt like a rockstar.  We’ll see how I feel when we actually start workshopping. 

            They fed us all three meals between classes today, which is pretty cool and pretty rare.  Lasagna dinner for all students and student readings concluded the night.  The student readings were incredible.  It’s amazing how many different styles of writing I’ve come to love.  There were some really great readers tonight, and batting clean-up, Jervey Tervalon, a brilliant fiction writer, and semi-new faculty member, who draws inspiration from the cities of New Orleans and Los Angeles.  I love this place.

            What I still don’t love- driving.  As soon as I get confident and start imagining myself already in my apartment, typing away, I’m crossing a bridge and being blinded by the lights of downtown Culver City or Marina del Rey.  My Garmin and I are not friends right now.

MFA Adventures- Orientation Day

            I already mentioned that I got here early yesterday, but I failed to mention exactly HOW early I got here.  Check-in was at 3:00 (and that was a very strict check-in time, I discovered).  By "check-in is at 3:00", the woman meant that she wasn’t even going to tell me where my rented parking space was located until 3:00.  So, I parked at the dog park in what I assumed was the general area.  I spent two hours envying the people taking their dogs to the park, and trying to avoid eye contact with the homeless man pushing a wheelchair full of his belongings.

            Besides being early for my apartment rental’s check-in, I ended up being early for my school’s residency, by a long shot.  New Student Orientation (which I only have to attend during this visit) isn’t until 6:00 PM. 

            Caught up on my readings for the residency, bored with cable, and worn out by facebook, I thought I’d explore what the landlady called “one of the safest neighborhoods in the area”.  The online photo advertising the apartment that I’m renting shows a picture of the alleyway from the apartment’s front door to the beach.  It’s an accurate picture, beige brick walls framing a boardwalk-side umbrella and the ocean in the background.  I ventured down the alleyway to what I hoped would be a string of brightly-colored, privately-owned shops and cafes.  I rounded the corner onto the boardwalk and tucked my purse a bit tighter beneath my arm. 

            I thought I knew what to expect.  I watch Nip/Tuck and they showed Venice Beach in the latest seasons in LA, and my professor (an Antioch alumnus) joked to not trip over any homeless people on my trip.  I stopped in the first tourist-y shop I could find to purchase batteries for my camera.  The Asian man behind the counter seemed to be laughing at me as I turned around and ventured into the open boardwalk area.

            Luckily, it was early, so the place wasn’t yet swarming.  Vendors were setting up tables and neon-colored signs advertising everything from caricatures to tables and tables of toe rings.  I passed the vendors and pretended not to see (or hear) the man playing a full-sized music classroom-style piano on the sidewalk.  My friend from the dog park was sitting on the sidewalk next to him, nodding to the music, his hand still resting on the armrest of his wheelchair full of belongings.

            I was one of about five people on the boardwalk wearing clothes that had been washed recently and not sporting dreadlocks.  I knew I’d just kick myself if I was in LA for 11 days and didn’t even get to the beach, so I pulled my purse in even tighter and walked a bit more briskly, keeping my head down. 

            As I neared the sand, I noticed a bright orange plastic fence stretching along the beach, midway between the sidewalk and the ocean. 

            “Oh God,” I thought.  “Someone’s been murdered and they blocked off the scene.”

            The signs on the fence mentioned something about “Authorized Personnel” and the waves being dangerous today; I breathed a sigh of relief.  Thankfully, I wasn’t looking at a murder scene.

            The walls surrounding a concrete seating area swam with graffiti.  The eight palm trees near the walls were all plastered with graffiti.  What kind of person defaces a palm tree?  Palm trees are the coolest.

              I looked around cautiously and pulled out my camera, now equipped with batteries, and snapped a picture of a batch of unpainted palm trees and two pictures of the ocean through the plastic orange fence.

            I said hello to the person who nearly ran me over with a skateboard, being that I was on the wrong side of the directionally divided sidewalk, and high-tailed it back to my apartment.

            Luckily, I am staying up the only alley that looks presentable from the beach.  In my leisurely mindset, I hadn’t even looked at street signs or markers.  In a panic, I found the one umbrella that looked like my online picture and booked it uphill.

            I clomped up the narrow wooden stairs to the adorable apartment I’m renting.  I muted my TV to read and I can hear the TV of my temporary neighbors.  They must not be braving the boardwalk either.

            I guess that equating “one of the safest neighborhoods” in Venice with “safe” in general is about as naïve as believing that “reduced fat” and “low fat” are the same thing.

           

            I’m keeping my pepper spray in hand when I go to my car around 3:00 to drive the 6.21 miles to school and be on time for my 6:00 orientation.  I mapquested from my apartment to school avoid highways, and it’s only a four minute difference from the highway route.

Alright, so I didn’t leave three hours early, but I did leave two hours to get there.  It was unnecessary.  I couldn’t have picked a better driving route.  I’m on Venice streets for a couple of blocks, smoothly merge onto a “highway” for a quarter of a mile, merge onto one of the shortest freeways in the state, exit when the freeway ends, and park on one of the levels reserved for students.  Easy Peasy.  I only got honked at once, and it was because I made a few poor decisions on the surface streets. 25 minutes.  Yeah, buddy.

            I’m really excited about how this program works.  It consists of five residencies (times that I’m in LA at the school, actively engaging in writerly things with others) and four project periods (times that I’m at home, doing writerly things and corresponding with a mentor in my genre and hiding away with my computer).  I’m considering doing a dual concentration (pretty much a double major) but it will take an extra semester.  By then, I might get some financial aid (fingers crossed), so maybe.

            Also, I might have been the only person in the room whose excitement actually heightened through the mention of the critical papers and annotated bibliographies that will be required, but I’m okay with it.

            I’ll have more information about the new and exciting things I’m learning for tomorrow’s post, but for tonight, one more diatribe against driving.

            I’ve only used a few streets more than once since I’ve been here, which is making things interesting.  My apartment’s address is actually on a “walk street” and my parking space in on a one-way street whose entrance intersects with a street that I can never seem to find.  My mapquest directions don’t take my parking space into account and tend to lead me on a crazy wild goose chase.  My GPS may be dead forever, so I’m relying on a combination of written directions, hazy mental maps, and a text message from mapquest.

            Tonight, I got ½ block away from the street I needed to be on before I gave up and decided that I was in the wrong place, turned around, and called Walt to be my GPS voice over the phone. 

            Now, I know to just drive until I hit the ocean and I’ll be close to where I need to be.  I was finally nearing the impossible-to-find street while traveling on a different one-way street when the unthinkable happened.  A person whose parking skills make me look like a master parked on the right-hand side of the street, her (we’ll assume it was a female driver) gold car’s big ass sticking out in the road.  That alone would’ve made this awesomely narrow street a challenge, but a yellow box truck parked on the left side of the street, at an angle.  The truck was in a tow away zone, so I put it in park and decided to wait for the driver to return to his truck.  I reconsidered that idea and climbed out of my car.  I would not fit through that space.  No way.

            On the phone, Walt keeps saying, “Karly, I know where you are.  Just go straight.”

            “Walt, I can’t go straight.”

            “No, really.  The street you’re on says you can go straight.”

            “It’s blocked,” I repeated.  “Blocked by illegally-parked cars.”

            The guy in the car behind me climbed out of his car.  His silhouette provided generously by the three cars backed up behind him made me lock my door out of instinct.  He’s going to stab me for not fitting through this gap, I thought.

            “The guy’s getting out of his car,” I told Walt.

            “Just go straight,” he said again.

            The guy from the car behind me walked to the nose of my car, “I’m going to help you,” he said.

            “This guy’s going to help me,” I told Walt.  I sat down my phone.

            He guided me through the gap (which was exactly not the size I thought it was) and told me to have a good night.

            Go figure, people are mostly good.

MFA Adventures- Driving Day

            I hate driving.  Like, I really, really hate it.  After living in Phoenix for two years, I still refused to drive any routes that involved highways.  I lived on the surface streets.  While taking classes at Scottsdale Community College, I drove on surface roads for forty-five minutes rather than the eighteen-minute trip on the interstates.  My driving anxiety is intense.  Once, I parked in the aisle of a busy lot and demanded that Walt switch places with me, find a space, and park. I once closed my eyes when I felt like my car wouldn’t fit between the semi next to me and the rock wall on the other side.  I’m the person who stays in the left lane going the speed limit because her turn is coming up in the next ten miles, I brake while changing lanes, and think that tailgating saves me time.  You get it.

            So, why oh why did I decide that driving to Los Angeles for my writing residency would be the best idea?  It was cost-effective, yes (3/4 of a tank of gas to get here).  Good for my health, not so much.

            I took off from Prescott this morning at 7 AM, four red bulls in my front seat I originally planned to leave at 8 AM to check in with my vacation rental in LA at 4:00, an hour after their standard check-in time of 3:00.  Walt suggested that I leave an hour earlier, in case I hit traffic, hence 7 AM.  Because Arizona doesn’t believe in Daylight Savings Time, for some reason, I forget that time zones still exist (and they do).  So, I gained an hour on my drive and didn’t account for it. 

            My GPS was cranking along with me the entire way, alerting me to the speed limits as they changed, mocking me with the changing estimated arrival time when I went below the speed limit, and warning me for upcoming turns.  Like a Beverly Hillbilly, I cheered and clapped at the first sight of skyscrapers.  Traffic wasn’t too bad.  I began wondering if LA’s traffic was overrated, like Seattle’s rain (I’ve been there.  It only rained once the entire trip.).

            The GPS showed me the series of complicated exits, keep lefts, and lane endings.  Then it shut off.  I pushed the power button and it sputtered to life.  It told me to merge onto CA-60.  Then it shut down for good.  Turns out, my Blackberry charger fits the GPS but it doesn’t provide the same amount of power.  Dead GPS.  I cussed at it and alternated tapping the screen and power button.  I wanted to cry.  I inhaled a few sharp breaths, trying not to cry.

            Luckily, mom had sent me the directions in a text message when I left this morning.  Still, I was left with only one form of direction, a form of direction that didn’t know how to speak to me or re-calculate if I took the wrong exit.  I couldn’t have been more relieved to take my last exit and pull into my rented parking space in front of my rented apartment, two hours early.

            Well, I’m settled in now, my Space Bags are unpacked, and my wrinkled clothes are hanging in the closet.  It’s strange to have cable, colorful walls, and a blanket without a single piece of dog hair on it.

            Just as I was planning my schedule for tomorrow and thinking about how much less time I’d need to allow to get to school because of the traffic overrated-ness and all, an old Phoenix friend posted this photo on facebook with the caption, “This is the not-so-fun part of LA.”

Yipes.  I think I'll be allowing three hours for my 6.21 mile drive tomorrow.