mandalay

i would be proud to partake of your pecan pie

on the way into cali, driving through the gold mountain haze, smiling into the yellow light, a coyote sprinted across the highway in front of my car. it was so close that i could see the individual strands of fur, could see its wild coyote face. had it paused a thousandth of a second to look at me, i would have killed it. and yet it disappeared through the brush on the other side and my car sped on without ever having hit the brake. the joy i feel driving on these roads on this place i can't begin to describe to you. i am not in texas anymore and i feel like i have escaped that life which was not my destiny.

for the last few years i've been working doing something which i'm good at but was miserable doing. i figured it out when i applied to grad school for creative writing in '04. by the time i got accepted in the spring, there i was. in new york city sitting in on an amazing class, knowing i'd be working with sharon olds, surrounded by interesting poets whom i genuinely wanted to know, completely interested in the discussion at hand... but it just didn't feel right. i had an overwhelming sense of ick. i wasn't ready to be a writer—or, rather—to be *just* a writer. in fact, it turned out that getting accepted was just the kick in the pants i needed to realize how much i wanted to be doing photography. there's that line in when harry met sally where he says "When you realize that you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." this is how i felt once i had made my decision not to get an mfa. how do you make the rest of your life start right now? unfortunately, the answer seems to be "with infinite patience and a broad interpretation of the word now."

more than two years later, i'm finally here. and here is a 273-square-foot lofted cabin in a backyard in santa cruz, california. when i go to sleep at night, i can here the sea lions barking from the ocean, three blocks at the end of my street. my credit card overfloweth, my nose runneth, and i know not a soul, but i am finally, finally here at that precipice.

posted by amanda @ 2:00 PM