My Test be over
This blog paused to mourn the departure of NC State from the NCAA Tournament.
650 Verbal, 290 Math; I won't receive my analytical writing score for a week. I really pushed the deadline for State's application, so it's probably iffy that I'll get in; but my score won't hurt me. According to the English Department's web page, the lowest accepted score on the GRE Verbal section has been 590. Of course, my samples could still suck. BTW, I didn't give a toss about the qualitative, not that I could have done much better had I actually remembered how to figure out the radius of a damned circle.
I've been writing so much, I haven't had the words to blog, actually (although we were really in mourning; Evtimov had his best game ever, and we still lost by two points. It's painful to be a Wolfpack fan). I haven't read much, either, althought I did go back and re-read Susanna Moore's In the Cut after seeing the excellent movie starring Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo on dvd. Ruffalo was in The Last Castle, one of the highlights of that movie; James Gandolfini was not, and the story was hokey, but Ruffalo, you believed. He's totally someone else in this film; duh, do you think that might be what they mean by acting? Of course they fudged the ending; how can you end a movie with Meg Ryan being cut up and bagged by a serial killer? The book was, as I remembered it to be, stunning. If I could write like Susanna . . . I also tried to read her first novel, The Whiteness of Bones, but didn't make it past the first two chapters; too much first-novel exposition, and I couldn't get into the Phillipines right now, especially when it's been pretty gorgeous here in Carolina. I'm doing some poetry reading now, and then will dive into the sequel to Altered Carbon, called Broken Angels. If I can get past the brilliant poetry of Paul Auster without weeping for my complete lack of talent, that is.
In other news, Richard and I have bought air and hotel tickets, and now I have bought a wedding dress, shoes, and a bag--couldn't resist the last, they matched so perfectly (sometimes it's pretty cool to be a girl).
Live from Mid-Air
Today, I officially jumped straight off the
Cliffs of Insanity: I changed my NC State graduate school application from an application for admittance into the MS in Technical Communications to the
MFA in Creative Writing. I'm scared completely out of my wits. Now someone is going to tell me whether or not I've got it. I'm going to be crushed right to the ground! I've taken a huge leap, and I can't explain how exhilirated I am at this moment. I am doing the most irrational thing I've ever done in my life -- and it's the best feeling
ever. Quick, bottle it and we'll make a fortune!
Writing at the speed of thought
I'm possessed by a story I'm writing; it's not the main novel for which I was building an outline, but a story which just appeared nascent in my brain one day when I was driving to work. It's basically a Harlequin romance, which embarrasses me, but it's in my head and I have to get it out. I'm pretending it could actually get published, but mostly I think it's an exercise: can I get the whole story out, beginning, middle, and end, so that it's coherent at the last? Even if it's not any good?
I've been banging out between three and ten pages a day, usually making about six pages each day; having a serious amount of down-time at work helps considerably. I've also found that all of this writing is pushing my other writing, that is, my poetry, and that I'm becoming sort of word-mad, writing in the car, writing on my break. Either I'm blossoming creatively for the first time in many years, or I'm completely insane.
My pants are too big!
I've reached a lovely point in my diet. The point where my clothes start falling off! I swear, if I could bottle this feeling, this energy, this emotion, and give some to everyone who is overweight, none of us would be. You don't know when you're overweight how much better being a healthy weight
feels. I've lost 17 pounds now following the Dr. Phil food plan, so I'm feeling in a more comfortable place to brag a bit about it now. You can follow it too with a copy of the
Ultimate Weight Solution Food Guide, as Richard and I are.
Dr. Phil is all about changing your personal habits to make weight loss a new good habit, but when Richard and I looked through his original Weight Loss solution book, we realized that we had already made a great many of the changes advocated in the book. What we needed to do was know what to eat and when to eat it, and to exercise. The exercise, we are convinced, is the major quotient in our success so far (Richard has lost 16 lbs.), but I know that eating the right carbs, and trashing all the junk food and foods with white flour and hidden sugar from our diet is a serious factor as well. I won't go on and on about it, because I've got quite a bit more to go (my ultimate goal is to shag off 80 pounds). If you read the book and follow it, you can do it. Furthermore, it really doesn't feel like dieting, once you get used to not being stuffed with bad carbs and high fructose corn syrup all day. I have loads more energy now, and that's going to help me get the rest of the way there.
The Pursuit of Happiness
I am against amending the Constitution of the United States to limit marriage to unions between one man and one woman. I support the right of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender Americans to marry under civil law. You do not have to make a stand on homosexuality or bisexuality or transgender surgery to oppose President Bush's proposal to "save marriage," because marriage is not under attack. Your right to the pursuit of happiness, first proposed in the Declaration of Independence and signed by British colonists in 1776, is what is under attack. Nothing that President Bush has done since he's been in office--pushing forward his father's failed agenda in Iraq, bailing out corporations at the expense of public land rights and clean air and water, or propping up the wealthiest percentage of Americans--is as dangerous as what he is doing now. I am not particularly crazy about the Senators John because they haven't had the balls to stand up on this issue, but they are against George Bush, and now I must vote for the candidate with the strongest chance of taking him out of office, because I honestly believe the very foundation of our nation is being challenged.
I'm going to get married this year. I'm a heterosexual female and I have the right to go into any civil courthouse in our 50 states or Puerto Rico and apply for a marriage license. Once I am legally married I have the right to leave Richard in full possession of everything I legally possess at the time of my death, and I have the right to give him the right to dispose of my assets according to my desires, or according to his desires if I want to leave it up to him. Being married also means that if I am in a serious accident and near death, someone will contact him as my husband and inform him of the danger I am in. It means I will take care of him and he will take care of me, and that he will understand and know what my wishes are in an event of the gravest of magnitudes. This is security. This makes me happy. My country has enabled me to pursue, and secure, my happiness in this manner. Like everyone else I know, Richard's happiness, and the happiness of others whom I love, is of paramount importance to me.
If a lesbian female who is like me in all things but her sexuality wants to do the same with the person she loves, she can't do it in my state, and I support state's rights. North Carolinians voted on it, and that's what we decided, right or wrong. But right now, she can move to another state and do so if she desires it for her happiness. Her right to pursue that happiness, by moving to another state in this instance, was declared over 225 years ago. A constitutional amendment would deny her the right to ever attempt to achieve that happiness in this country. But that's not all. A constitutional amendment would deny this right to at least 10% of the given population. Many members of this population are among my most dearly loved friends. They have had many miseries because of their sexual orientation, and now they will have another, if President Bush succeeds in denying the fundamental right to pursue happiness to 10% of our populace. If we do this, what will stop us from denying other rights to other citizens on other grounds? Is it really so far-fetched to imagine that we might ban Latino immigrants from owning property, that we might ban people who cannot read from holding a job, that we might ban Jewish people from owning businesses? Call me crazy, but President Bush's shirt under that ever-present blue pinstripe of his is starting to look brown to me.
This is how it begins. One tiny right at a time. Ask yourself: how does a gay person marrying another gay person affect your own marriage? How does that put the "institution" of marriage in danger? And how does it hurt someone in North Carolina if someone in California is gay, and married? I can't think of a single reason. Can you?
