Waiting Redux

There is an answer, of sorts: wait-listed. This amounts to rejection, although with the usual “it's not you, it's me!” appended. This is not untrue; the economy has many victims and the arts is among them. Several prominent programs severely cut funding and, in some cases, acceptances. A few suspended their programs for a year, letting the fields lie fallow and hoping for better weather.

I was hurt at first. Well, that's not quite true. I was hurt for a while (thus the delay in posts). If there is a graceful way to handle rejection, I have not mastered it.

For the first few days after receiving the dreaded small envelope, I sulked while insisting to everyone who would listen that I was definitely not sulking. Sara bought me peanut butter M&Ms and patiently listened to my non-complaining complaints. Then, I went through a brief bout of dreams in which the New School took me from the wait list, offered me a scholarship, and bought me a brontosaurus to ride to class.

Unfortunately, none of those dreams came true.

My nascent adult instincts intervened a few weeks ago and shook me from my malaise. I accepted a full-time position with my employer and made plans for the upcoming year. If waiting will happen, then it will happen on my terms.

So far, I have submitted a poem to a literary magazine and have been writing more frequently than usual. It is a good start. This summer, there will be no harvest. There will be the hard work of tilling fields that will only yield when the work is done.

I will post a version of the poem, “Parokhet,” tomorrow. Expect to see more work in the near future.

Waiting

I am still waiting to hear from the New School's admission department, and the lack of communication, the emptiness of not knowing, has manifested in variations.  Sometimes, it is sand in clockwork; the seconds drag one after the next, a weary procession of defeated soldiers.  Last night, it was a needle poised a breath before sleep.  My limbs ached and rain washed the stones.  But just as the last thought sighed its end, lightning slapped the skies.  And then I waited restlessly in the dark.

This morning, I woke late, edited a friend's essay, and tutored.  After the student left, I dawdled at the office because the mailbox sat, Sphinx-like, at journey's end.  Eventually, I gathered the remnants of my nerve and drove home.

The constant chatter of email has done little to lessen the muteness of the unopened mailbox.  When I check Gmail, the sender and subject are first and foremost; there is usually no unwrapping, no mystery to unearth, just the efficient transmission of information.  The New School does not send its decisions over email or phone.  The simplest packet of information, the yes/no on which all computing is based, is in their opinion fit only for the formality of the physical letter.

There is poetry in this decision; after all, writers aspire for their words to live in ink.  Pixels lack romance.  But I desire neither poetry nor romance.  Over these last weeks, I have ached for brutality, for directness, for bleeding in black and white.  1/0.  Win/lose.  Yes/no.

It is night now; there will be no mail until morning.  And so I will wait as the seconds grind one into the next until I face the mailbox once more.