New Amsterdam

March 31

Hey.

Guess what?

Meg got into Columbia.

Yeah, yo. My girl got accepted into the best graduate social work program in the country. That's how cool she is. She found out yesterday. She's sort of floating around in shock-- she did not expect to be accepted, this was her "wildest dreams," "shoot-for-the-moon" application.

She might request a deferment for a year, and see if they'll grant her that; she'd like to have a year to breathe and rest and just work in her field, away from academia. On the other hand, she's an advanced standing student (that basically means she did all the work of a first-year Master's student as an undergrad), so it's only a one-year-to-degree program for her-- she might just do it, and get it done. She could start in September 2001 and have her Master's by the end of June 2002. With an MSW from Columbia, she should be in a very good place job-wise, and we could move... anywhere. She's currently leaning toward going in the fall.

If you want to congratulate her, feel free!

The greater relevance for y'all is: I'm going to live in New York! Probably starting this September. I'll most likely work as a lowly admin at Columbia or one of the many other schools in the area; such places are always hungry for help, and I've got a background in academic office settings, so I'm pretty well qualified.

I mean, man. New York. Gotham. Metropolis. Practically the archetype of "City." The skyline country folks imagine when they think "Big City." Our own decaying latter-day dreamscape.

I've never been there. I've never even been near there. New York has never really figured in my dreams or aspirations, you know? San Francisco, yes-- California, yes. So I moved here. When I thought "New York" I mostly thought "Scary! Big and scary!"

And it might be big and scary, but now that I'm actually going there, I find it somehow less intimidating. More real somehow, a real place. And, as many people have told me, it's not like I have to embrace the whole city-- I'll learn my little ten-block radius, my haunts and hangouts, work and home and places to read and eat and write. It'll be cool.

One weird thing will be my being so close to such a great graduate writing program, though, and not being able to take advantage of the resources. I mean, the people who teach in the Writing department at Columbia... wow. The name I've mentioned here in Tropism before is Billy Collins, who is one of my favorite living poets-- he teaches a poetry workshop at Columbia. So he'll be, like, some incredibly small geographic distance from me, talking and teaching, and I won't be able to soak it up! I feel sort of the same way now, about Ellen Bass-- she teaches workshops here in Santa Cruz (not affiliated with the University, though), and I'd love to take part, but scheduling and finances have not coincided (it's a pretty expensive workshop). So that's an opportunity I've pretty well missed.

If me and Meg like the area, though, (the "area"-- freaking Manhattan), and think we'd like to live there for a couple of more years, I might apply to Columbia's MFA program next year. What can it hurt? I might not get in, but I could make the effort. So that's something to think about, too.

"New York. Sometimes I think people who live anywhere else are just fooling themselves."

-Edward Norton, from Keeping the Faith ((mis)quoted from memory; feel free to correct me)