MFAche.

And finally getting over my misplaced shame.

First: Submit a piece to the first Dog Throat Flash Fiction Contest by the end of this month - there are monetary prizes!

Second, last week I came across a file on my computer, “MFA Final.”

The file’s name seemed unreal. A file that I thought had been lost forever. It’s not that I recall destroying the manuscript that accompanied my application to graduate school, it was simply that I’d never been able to locate it when I’d go looking. So I printed out the 31-page piece to give it tangibility. To make it less of a ghost. And then I let it sit near me, giving safe distance to words that may reignite my shame.

Weeks after submitting my application, I received a letter in May of 2010:

“Your application for the Master of Fine Arts – Writing program has been carefully evaluated. We regret we are unable to grant you admission to graduate study at the University of Nebraska at Omaha at this time. It is not possible to admit all applicants who might benefit from further study. In reaching this decision, many factors were considered, including academic background, personal goals, and availability of space within the program.”

I was gutted.

But, more destructively, I was embarrassed. The shame was worsened by the fact that it never occurred to me I wouldn’t be accepted. Like I wrote in an earlier post about old poems, “If the Writing program had been a first date, then I was the person who planned their wedding after one kiss. But the Writing program fucked me without ever embracing me.”

Inflated confidence about my writing and background wasn’t the only factor driving my disbelief. I also thought my letters of recommendation would be clinchers; a way to give my oddness a sort of digestible validation. Letters of recommendations from personal friends and published authors. And while I thought my manuscript had been lost, I never misplaced those letters because I’d re-read them when feeling low. Like love letters to the Me I never became. I found warmth in their celebratory words. I found appreciation in the accurate praise of my idiosyncrasies – the satisfaction of being seen.

Here’s just a brief passage from the letter of recommendation written by Douglas

Otis

Twelve” Wesselmann, who you can now find here on Substack.

That said, I have known Trilety for a few years and have always enjoyed her company as a friend. Then several months ago, as a product of several conversations, decided to partner on a piece for a Seattle literary competition. Working with Ms. Wade was great fun, and a revelation to me of just how good her writing can be, and how well she works as a collaborator. Our work, a prose poetry piece entitled, “Then She Will Tell Me” was completed on deadline due, in no small part, to Ms. Wade’s persistence and enthusiasm. Her facility with language and the craft of writing prose and poetry impresses me as a writer and as a reader.

One look at the books, paintings, and figurative works in her home would give anyone certainty that she is dedicated to the joy of all manner of creative pursuits. Her creativity stands out. Her enthusiasm and energy are undeniable. Ms. Wade would, in my opinion, be an asset to the program and a wonderful representative of the University. I recommend her without any hesitation.

The skill of writing a solid letter of recommendation is not an easy one. You have to both hone in on the individual, and then highlight how their individualism will benefit the institution or job. Douglas can write a fucking letter. He can write most anything.

Here’s a section from another friend, also now on Substack. While

Jeffrey Koterba

and I didn’t collaborate on writing the way Otis and I did, we did spend a great deal of time reading and editing each other. Jeff is the first one to teach me that when you’re editing someone’s work, it’s helpful to start with some generous feedback before you launch into the nitty gritty of edits. He taught me to be kind.

I have known Ms. Wade for over ten years and during that time I have found her to be incredibly creative, talented, and dedicated to the art of writing. As a writer myself, Ms. Wade has proven herself to be one of my most trusted first readers. In fact, she played a significant role in that capacity while I was writing my memoir, “Inklings,” published in November, 2009, by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I was continually amazed by her spot-on advice, and her ability to see and understand what I was aiming for, even if I, myself, didn’t fully understand. During this time, it impressed me that she hadn’t formally studied creative writing--her feedback rivaled that of some of the best writing coaches and teachers with whom I have worked.

Furthermore, I have read with pleasure and great interest, her own work, and have witnessed her growth as a writer. She continually pushes herself—her work ethic is impressive, her reading list unmatched to anyone I know. Her ideas are as unique as anything I have read.

Both Jeff and Otis (in the full original letter) called to light their own accomplishments in their recommendation letters. This is another mark of a solid letter of recommendation; it’s less about boasting and more about vouching. . .it’s like the reviews on the backs of books, they aren’t by readers, they’re by writers.

And last but not least, my best girlfriend, Elisabeth, wrote me a powerhouse of a letter. Here’s just a snippet. . .

Trilety is the special kind of person who is equally at ease creating a power point on permaculture as she is sitting down with lovely stationery to pen a message to a friend. Her couch is a "davenport" and she uses words like "perspicacious" and "insouciant". She's on a mission to find me the perfect vintage dictionary, as my no-name abridged version isn't quite up to snuff. She reads law review articles and court rulings simply because she enjoys them. Her favorite hot tea, Lapsang Souchong, reviled by many, is a wacky one that smells distinctly of ham on a campfire. Simply put, she's a remarkable woman with an even more remarkable perspective, one that would benefit any group centered around dedication to creativity and the written word.

But all the best letters of recommendation in the world can’t save a bad manuscript, and that’s how I always felt; that my manuscript was bad. That my submission was apparently shit. Unworthy words penned with a hope made of mesh; a sieve for my dreams to fall through. But reading it again after all these years gave me a sense of sweetness toward the younger me. And a tenderness toward my naivety. I mean, do I think that what pushed the committee over the edge into “no” was the erotic section about the protagonist having a mad love affair with the man on the Walk Sign of a crossing signal? Maybe. But could they say they’d ever read anything like it before? Or since?

I’m sure my writing was too juvenile, or maybe too ungrounded, for any graduate program. But, after 15 years, I’m no longer embarrassed by who I was or what I wrote, because I’m content with who I am and how I write now.

So while I’m not sharing all 10,000+ words of my piece here, I am sharing just a few sections. . .as a way to lay bare the past of me, unashamedly. It is what it is, and I didn’t go to graduate school. Instead, I opened a bakery with one of my favorite humans in the world, and I wouldn’t have traded those years for any amount of formal education.

So stood Holly, at the edge of the yard of a home, five houses down from the one she was visiting. Riveted, she watched a mother bathing a baby in a sink below a kitchen window. The story of Mother and Child, though overdone, grew arms in her head as Holly told the tale of the Baby Who Banished Loneliness. Sadness covered furniture like doilies until the arrival of the Baby. The Baby brought the woman comfort and drained the home of loneliness, like dingy bathwater, so that the house was filled with the sound of a man gargling salt water in winter. At night, when solitude morphed into confinement, the Baby slept under the slow spin of a mobile and glowed like a battery-operated toy. The luminescent infant flooded the room with so much light that Loneliness was banished to the space between matter and anti-matter.

---

If Despair is wanting to be someone you are not, then what is wanting an infinite amount of time to be who you are?

She continued to climb and descend the hills of the neighborhood, no longer looking in windows or stringing stories. She walked, hoping her heels would wear away, because without heels it would be harder to escape. With feet still intact, she returned for one more night to Corporeal Him. He had pupils so large and dark she thought outer space had filled him from the inside. So many childhood hours were spent learning about right and wrong at the televised altar of Star Trek, that maybe space oozed from fabric covered speakers to flow around his toes and up his pant-leg and around his neck until finding the perfect sized hole in the left of his ears. And that was how his eyes became so black.

---

Normally, she wanted to escape the mountains. When she approached, they appeared a cutout in a paper sky and she believed them to be flat, one-dimensional, and easy to negotiate. But, mountains were deceptive; instead of being flat, they were deep and wide and dark. Light was limited, as the sun is forever caught between peaks like an exploding bird in disoriented flight. Horizons are not found in mountains, so the sun lasts longer on the plains and the moon lasts longer over water. Mountains could be reconsidered though, if they rose from his body so she could hide herself in the dark crevices of his arms and elbows, knees and ass.

---

On a later than dawn walk, Holly’s mind was on Imaginary Him and the miles now between them. Miles that gave a map spread. She came to the intersection she usually avoided in order not to see her old lover, her lover whose name was Walk. But, being preoccupied with Imaginary Him, she forgot her normal route. So there she stood, still and apprehensive, at the cross-walk. He was still too, in his white, electric Lite-Brite form at the top of the black pole. Unlike Orange Hand, Walk was not gaudy and flamboyant. He was thoughtful and permissive.

Over one year ago, at this exact intersection, she stood in boots, jeans, and a fitted black dress. No coat was worn as the air was almost room temperature, but with a cooling breeze. A look up to check the status – “walk”, “don’t walk”, or “get across quick because it’s about to be don’t walk again” – when she really saw him for the first time. His perfect outline, always in a static, but determined gait – a man who had a place to be but wasn’t so arrogant as to avoid slowing down and enjoying the present moment. His back arm always in a perfect bend, a bend she imagined was a lovely place to recline in street-light nude. His front arm was in a pre-shake gesture, a sign that he was a people-person, someone who could sophisticatedly maneuver a social situation and still bring truth to her neck. And just as quickly as she had noticed him, he was gone. Only to be replaced by that arrogant Orange Hand. He was so pompous and greedy with time, always snatching away a few more seconds from Walk. Granted, Orange-Hand’s prick behavior was definitely a turn-on for some of the other lady pedestrians, but not Holly. Orange-Hand’s persistent existence though was always followed, without fail, by Walk’s glowing contours and pointillist insides.

---

Scattered light from the electricity of her thoughts brought a shivering glare to the room. Both their ears heard the distant buzz of the current of her mind. So Corporeal Him slid an arm through glass, into the black sky above the blue sea, and scooped up a handful of night. Night stayed clasped in his fingers until his hand was back in the room where he let night go. The room became opaque.

“I like that.” She said. Already her voice more relaxed.

“Do you think it’s too dark though?” he asked, as he slid a hand again through the closed window and came back in with a fistful of stars. Opening his palm, they flew to corners of the room like flimsy butterflies from a net. The glow from the starscape lit Holly’s face just enough for him to see the corners of her lips rise as her chest lowered. Night still stuck to his fingers and dripped from his palm. He smoothed what was left of night onto her body, bringing night to her knees and neck, to her belly and breasts. With the tip of each of his fingers he brought night to her mouth and she tongued viscous dreams until night was safe in her cheeks. She was celestial with him. She was a spinning ring of vapor around his body.

---

Holly watched Sun, in his relaxed state, with legs crossed at the ankles and resting on the peaks of the Olympics – Sun’s ottoman. “So as the story goes. While Night was mad at Moon and Moon was away, Twilight showed up early, or late, I can never remember the difference between Twilight and Dusk, they both look so damn similar. Maybe there is no difference, maybe Dusk is just masquerading as Twilight or vice versa.”

Holly knew the difference. But she also knew better than to correct Sun, or worse interrupt one of his tales. Holly had a friend who interrupted Sun with a bunch of didactic questions during what her friend thought was dialog and Sun thought was performance. At the fourth in a row of inquiries, Sun found the first passing cloud and ducked away, but not before leaving a smudge of pink on the cheeks of the inquisitor.