I did what I always do when I'm a little perplexed--I made a ton of food: summer squash, zucchini, and potato gratin with olive oil, fresh parsley, and garlic scapes (almost all of the ingredients of which came from the farm) and enough chocolate chip cookies for all of my neighbors and some of Bartlett.
I also made about 10 alternative life plans in my head, a course of action I take when I am unsure of what I'm doing in life. Most of these plans included jobs in publishing or freelancing and lots of writing in apartments with nice lighting and a typewriter. These apartments were located everywhere from Paris to New York to Philadelphia to Lancaster. They were very definitely not in Amherst and far, far away from academia.
I think I've been so concerned with figuring out what I'm going to *do* to support the thing that I really want to do in life (ie write), that I haven't been doing what I need to do. That is: poems. Except I did write a poem this week, and it felt good. About dreams and Amelia Earhart and a personified Low Pressure System wearing a cravat.
It is confusing to be good at and praised for something that you enjoy but do not love. It is somewhat worse to be good at and praised for something that you enjoy but do not love in a town that is a postcard for a bourgeois, upper-middle class existence that is mind-numbingly boring. But for the farm, the small press, the Bookmill, the prospect of rowing in the fall, and the insane library access, I might run screaming off into the hills.
My next poem will feature a personified Hyperbole wearing a tutu and reciting Whitman.
It is confusing to be good at and praised for something that you enjoy but do not love. It is somewhat worse to be good at and praised for something that you enjoy but do not love in a town that is a postcard for a bourgeois, upper-middle class existence that is mind-numbingly boring.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's just like this: whenever someone asks me how I like Amherst, I say, "It's pleasant. It's a great place to spend 3 years," though secretly I'm thinking, "I wish it were only 2." And I don't know what I'd do if I had to stay longer.
The problem with getting a PhD-- and it's something I'm considering post-MFA-- is that you are set on a path for a good chunk of your youth, living on an income that doesn't get conflated with poverty because you're still upholding bourgie values. And you have to build an identity around being a doctor of loving books. It's a bizarre world. It's probably why if I got a PhD, it wouldn't be in books. At least I could save those for myself.