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.

      

Thoughts on Dialects

It seems that everyone in Arizona came here to escape somewhere else. And, why not? Arizona rocks.

When I lived in Tempe and people asked where I was from, I answered, “Kansas,” the following question was almost always, “Oh, where in Kansas?”.

No one actually knows “where” things are in Kansas. As the “Two by Four State,” it measures only 211 miles by 417 miles. If you know one town, you know all towns. And, in most cases, if you know one town, it’s only because you’ve lived there.

But, I’ve always participated in the conversation, with the bizarre hope that this time the person cam from where I used to live. “A small town in South-Central Kansas,” I’d say, baiting them. Only if they responded with “Oh, near________ (Liberal, Great Bend, hell, even ‘the Oklahoma border’)” the conversation could continue.

When I traveled Phoenix, northern AZ, and Las Vegas for Tae Kwon Do tournaments, the question was more easily answered by the lettering stitched to my back. I represented the Tempe branch of Lee’s Black Belt Academy.

One recent Vegas trip, I was asked by a bartender where I was from, “Pre-skit,” I said.

“You must’ve been born and raised there, huh? You say it like a local. It’s spelled Pre-scott.”

“I grew up in Kansas,” I said shortly, turning from the bar with my rum and coke. I mulled over the question of when I started pronouncing Prescott like a pro. I just did, at some point in the last two and a half years.

It’s easier to pick up on dialectical differences and adopt them than explain where I’m from every time I use the word “supper,” pronounce “orange” without an “r,” or make “roots” sound like “ruts”.

Majoring in interdisciplinary studies, I studied a little bit of everything as an undergrad. I blame/thank my brief love affair with linguistics for the alterations I’ve made to my Kansan speech habits.

I had no trouble completing a regional dialect project in my linguistics classes. I’d simply call home and make note of things that I recognized I’d changed in my own speech. Dad says, “roded,” as in “I roded the tractor just down the road.” Roo puts an “r” in “wash.” And, lastly, mom will forever use the word “dinner” to mean a noon-time meal and “supper” to mean an evening meal. My professor found my report charming.  I have to say that I feel the same about my home state.

I’ve been out of Kansas for about four and a half years now. And, it’s time.  It’s just time to go home for a little while.

So, around the start of the year, I’ll be re-learning how to use “dinner” and “supper” properly, so as not to confuse meal times. I’ll probably go back to leaving the “r” out of “orange” and stick it right back in the word “wash”.

I guess you could say that I’m going back to my ruts. And, I couldn’t be happier.

The Language Barrier

                I can’t understand anyone with even the slightest accent.  Much to Walt’s dismay, this has caused me to turn off such epic movies as Snatch, Terminator, and any James Bond movie featuring Daniel Craig.  Thick accents don’t sound like English to me. 

                The best nail salon in town is tucked away in a corner of Wal-Mart.  The husband and wife who own it are Vietnamese.  Walt and I went to a ballet for Valentine’s Day this year, and I wanted a manicure to go with my dressy outfit.  The woman who works the nail salon is nearly impossible for me to understand, and I gladly waited for the man to finish with his customer.

                Eventually he ushered me into the small salon.  Gesturing toward the wall of nail polish, he implied that I could pick a color for my fingernail tips.  I chose a dark red.

                He clucked his tongue and took the bottle from me, replacing it in the nail polish rack.

                Alright, I thought, no red.  I walked back toward the wall to choose another color.  The small man took me by the wrist.  He pointed to a piece of cardboard on the counter by his station.  The cardboard held various colors of long fake fingernails.  He pointed to a similar shade of red.

                “Okay,” I said.  “But, I want just the tips.  And, I need them to be short.”

                He nodded vigorously, “Yes, yes.  Tips.  Short, square-round, you say.”

                “Okay,” I agreed again, wondering why we weren’t yet seated at the nail station.

                “These hold color better.  See her nails?” he pointed to the girl whose nails his wife was working on.  I looked at her nails, noticed her knuckle tattoos, and looked away.

                “Yes, I want them to look like hers.”

                “No.  She come back all the time.  Her nails not hold color.  You pick this,” he pointed again to the cardboard.

                Holy crow, I thought.  Should I just leave now?  This could be excruciating.  Maybe he’ll just get frustrated with me and not talk at all; he’s got to get tired of talking to customers all day every day.  I’ll give him a break.

                I decided against bolting from the scene and sat down across from him at his nail station.  He pulled my hands toward him, beneath the desk light.

                “Whoa!” he said, feigning that my engagement ring blinded him and shielding his eyes.  “Pretty,” he said.

                I laughed politely, “Thanks.”  He clipped, filed, and cleaned my nails in preparation for the fake tips’ attachment.

                “So, what you do?” he asked. 

                “I’m a student,” I said. 

                “What you study?”

                “English,” I told him, “I’m going to be a writer.”

                “Oh!” he said.  “You write my story!” 

                Oh gosh, I thought.  I don’t think this is going to be a nod-and-smile-my-way-through-it kind of story.  I focused all of my attention on the man.  “What’s your story?” I asked.

                “I come from Vietnam when I was nineteen,” he began.

                His mother sent him away so he could create a better life in America.  He crammed into a tiny motor boat with dozens of other people.  There was no room for anything but people on the boat, he had only a picture of his mother with him.  Their boat left from the coast of Vietnam under the cloak of darkness.  Soldiers patrolled constantly and were commanded to shoot anyone trying to leave the country, no excuses, no explanations.

                The men in the boat used the clothes they were wearing as sails to get the small boat far enough from shore to start the motor to lessen the risk of being caught by the soldiers on shore.

                “Longest hour of my life,” he said.  “Only one in ten people who try to escape actually survive.  The ocean is so cold, and so many people want us dead.”

                He bent down to pick up the case of acrylic nails by his feet.  Behind him I noticed pictures that I hadn’t thought much about before.  In collage-style frames sat pictures of his son’s and daughter’s birthdays complete with lit candles and party hats.  Another frame held a collage of the family smiling from beneath Mickey Mouse hats and large sunglasses in front of Cinderella’s castle.  He sat up and I looked away from the photos, pretending to study my nails.

                I’m such a girl in that everything makes me cry these days, so I held my breath for a second.  He continued his story, a story whose details I’d kill to remember.

                He concluded, “I never see my mother again.  She wanted better life for me, so she send me away.  She stay there with rest of family.  We talk on phone and I send her pictures of family,” he gestured to the framed photos behind him.  “But, I never see her again.”

                A woman draped in a tent’s worth of zebra print with a mouthful of Bubbilicious clicked her nails on the counter next to us, “Are you open on Sundays?” she smacked.

                “We open every day,” he said.  “Every single day,” he repeated, quieter the second time.

                The self-checkout lanes spoke to the customers, and the babies in the carts of overwhelmed mothers screamed.  At that moment, it dawned on me that I hadn’t even noticed the man’s accent.  I’d hung on to his every word through his hour-long life story, and I hadn’t faked my rapt attention once.                

Inspiration

Blogging has been challenging for me this semester. Although I can talk your ear off in person, I feel like I’m running out of written words. Between business writing at work, blogging, journaling for one writing class, writing poems weekly for another class, creating text responses and fiction exercises for yet another class, and working on my MFA manuscript (20 pages at a time), recently, I’ve felt like I’m running out of words. This is not a good feeling for someone who hopes to do this for a living.

Luckily, I had the pleasure of attending the YC Faculty Reading on Thursday evening. One of the coolest things about this series of readings is that in the end of the event, the students/community members/attendees get to ask questions of the writers. The faculty reading always brings the largest audience because, quite frankly, they rock. Each writer on staff is currently teaching, publishing, and still touring for readings on a regular basis. They’re a great group of role models.

It’s a funny thing, gathering a group of writers. If listened to individually, we’d undoubtedly be treated as patients of multiple personality disorders. Every writer that I’ve heard read or had a conversation with has referred to the “voices” that he or she hears. The “voices” are what make them write. The writing for the “voices” keeps them sane and balanced in life.

While I sat in the audience thinking about the readings I’d just heard and whether “voices” ever speak to me, Walt unexpectedly raised his hand to ask a question. Not only does he hate it when I drag him to literary events, he doesn’t particularly like reading, so I stared in shock at his raised hand. One of my instructors called on him and smiled at me.

Walt specifically addressed my professor who’d published one book in June and one in August of this year.

“How many things are you usually working on at once?” he asked. The panel of writers nodded, great question, especially for a book hater.

“I’m usually working on at least four different things at once,” said Laraine. “Obviously,” she said, “not all of those things I’m working on make it to completion or are even worth completing. But, I have to write them anyway.”

Instant inspiration.

I failed miserably with the juggling kit that I got for Christmas in third grade, and I can rarely read more than one book at a time. This passion of mine is going to be a challenge. But what passion isn’t worth that challenge?