"The thing is not yet written"

(quote: me, video: PJ Harvey-White Chalk)

As part of the grad school application process, I'm currently studying for the GRE. I find myself using bigger words in conversation. Perhaps only my Marxists and Anarchists will see it, but the discourse, the subtext of the GRE . .the actual words they use to compose questions are oppressive and corroborate the dominant ideology. For example: "Fueds tend to arise in societies that lack centralized government, when public justice is difficult to enforce, private recourse is more brutal." and "However, the devious act of physically pilfering something from a record store is hardly present in the action of pressing a keyboard button from the repose of one's home." and an emphasis on the value of Organic Solidarity as described by Durkheim, and a dozen other subtle reinforcements of pragmatic American thought. Also, in the process of preparing for graduate school applications, I'm struggling to figure out what to submit. I like the things I've written most recently, but there is an inkling that these are not the ideal candidates in form or point or style. They are not MFA stories. I have written those too . . .but in the tail-end of this summer I've changed my game. I don't know which is best to present . . .

Everything is becoming very real. The latent precipitating and becoming the standard-bearer, the ache in my bones. Peeling off skin before it's ready, the musculature and capillaries raw and fresh to the air. I can smell it in my sleep. This move was another remove from what I remember. And now I'm a thousand miles, and one more reversal and negation from home. Nowhere is home. Everywhere is home.

I felt a twinge of fear. Good, resource-holding fear like some diluted perversion of what ancestors felt as the seasons changed. The financial crisis, coupled with lay-offs and money-troubles of those around me, engendered one lonely second where I reconsidered the wisdom of this whole MFA deal. And then radical reversion . . .security is a weakness, comfort is for hospice . . .sometimes we have to go into the cold with no jacket.