shades of regret

I got a newsletter today from a women's writing retreat where I spent 3 weeks what feels like 20 years ago but was actually 7. Which is still a pretty long time. Long enough to have lost the relationships that were alternately binding me and tempting me at the time - and to have lost more after that; to have left the consuming arts nonprofit job I had at the time that was so hard to let go for those 3 weeks; to have lost a parent and a grandparent and my reproductive organs (not a great loss considering the alternative, as the cause was ovarian cancer); to have moved across the country to North Carolina and then partway back across the country to Michigan; to have nearly forgotten the play I was writing there with such intense fervor. And also long enough, I hope, to have learned something along the way, to have stretched a few muscles I didn't even quite know I had 7 years ago. I've progressed in some way and I'm grateful for that.

And yet. I've lost something too. The impulse that took me to the retreat in the first place, that pushed me to apply even in the midst of being so busy and worn out with work that I had a crying fit the day I dropped the application in the mail. That helped me believe I had a reason to go there, something to say, a role in the world that included my writing in a way beyond marketing copy and grant applications. I was frought with fear and insecurity the whole time I was there, plagued by the useless but persistent anxiety that I Didn't Deserve It - but I still pushed myself to write most of a play in 3 weeks. Now I'm an alumna and I get the newsletters reflecting the glorious progress the place has made in the past few years right after returning from the brink of financial disaster and a purgatory of programmatic confusion. I'm delighted to see the progress they've made but can't help thinking, every time I get a letter, "If I applied now, I couldn't get in." This feeling is made all the more piquant by the knowledge that one of my exes is the executive director, responsible for the turnaround.

There are ways to move beyond this. I know. Tomorrow: a list.

Joblife

I received my first request for an interview today, after applying for what feels like 1800 jobs but is probably closer to 12. 

I am grateful and glad to have something to work toward besides another cover letter and another load of laundry, and impressed by the place that has requested to interview me. They provide an incredible amount of services to people in need in Wayne County - in every community except Detroit. Which is odd and interesting and a bit sad. But also understandable: there are so many people in need in the rest of the county. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that those who are in need in Detroit are getting anything near the support they need. Anyway, I'm interested in the job. And I hope, that if they consider me, they will also consider paying more than the wage listed in their online description. I came here committing to earning a better living and need to keep that promise to myself.

I went to Eastern Market this morning for the first time. Loved it. A sense of realness, industry, commerce, people outside, being alive. Different languages and accents. It's been there since 1891, serves restaurants as much as it serves the public. The open market area with its grand arched brick buildings is enclosed by a layer of wine and spice and antique stores and coney island diners, which are encircled by a meatpacking district that is still a meatpacking district, not a yuppie clubland like the one in new york. I bought roasted and sallted cashews, a wedge of cotswold, a plastic tub of green olives stuffed with almonds from a small mediterranean shop where the owner talked me out of five more dollars for a ball of goat cheese rolled in spices and a small chunk of halvah, that A, my guide on the journey pronounced "freaking GREAT" - her first time sampling the rich flaky stuff. Dark chocolate bars at a discount in my favorite shop, a deli-meets-dry goods store full of exactly what i want to eat. These were bought with my partner in mind. He writes sermons on Saturday night and delivers them Sunday morning. Chocolate helps.

After the market, a stop at Clark Park in Mexicantown where a Detroit human services organization (the equivalent of the one mentioned above for the city?) hosted their 3rd annual Dia de los Ninos/Dia de los Llibros celebration. Full of families and kids receiving free Spanish language and bilingual books. A young, cute, very college-educated-seeming woman sang songs in Spanish and played guitar and was surprisingly not annoying in any way. The incredibly talented inner city kids from Mosaic Youth Theatre were about to perform next. 

It's good to see a neighborhood that full of life on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. Especially when the cause is reading.

And now Rufus Wainwright is singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and I am full of thoughts about what next and how and what is best and where and why I should choose what...and I must sleep. For now I must sleep.

Here I am.

Bonjour Détroit, bonjour you strange and complicated town, bonjour to the first ice cream truck i've seen in years tooting its little pied-piper horn, bonjour to the pink mosaic jaguar being lowered into place outside the high school, bonjour open windows and salvation army runs, bonjour bright red cardinal perched on the church roof,  on this, the first truly warm day of spring, 24th April, 2009.  

4/24/2009 - the digits add up to 10, which reduces to 1. A good numerology. In tarot, the major arcana, 1 is the magician. The creative one. The maker of things. A good reminder on this day.

It is three months to the day exactly, today, since I left NC to arrive in Detroit. I had been sure it was six till right now. Or at least four. So - three is good. Makes me feel less behind.

Time is on my mind these days.

Two days ago was my sixth-month birthday. I'll be 40 on October 22. I try not to ascribe much meaning to 40 - I hate the women's-magazine "Look great after 40" mentality, but: still: it's a landmark. Hard to ignore. Hard not to feel kicked in the pants, a bit, by the knowledge that I've been on the earth 40 years. And so. I do.

 And I'm also aware, more than ever, I think, of how deeply subjective time and space can be. Three months feels like six when you're adjusting and stretching muscles you'd almost forgotten you had: the ones used in the improvisation required to sustain a relationship that is more than friendship, more than work, but not just romance and not quite family. A thousand-square foot loft feels like a studio apartment when two people find keep getting stuck in half-hearted attempts to contain their physical Stuff till it acts out like a neglected child. ("But I'm right here, covering your every surface! Tripping you on your way to the bathroom! Depressing you with my very presence! Why won't you pay attention to ME?") 

An arrival in  a completely new city and radically different life feels like a suspension in time when one brings a workload from the job that defined and even sometimes consumed the life one came from. So I took on 3 grants and a report from my previous employer, contract work that allowed me to start the new life without the terror of No Work and No Income, but that kept me tied to the place I had come from, and made it harder, for better or for worse, to shake off my attachment to that place. 

I mailed in my last assignment this week along with an invoice for the contract fee. 

And so now, the new work, the real work, begins.

Bonjour Détroit, bonjour blog, bonjour transition into something - and somewhere - and someone new.