Visions and Revisions

A couple of weeks ago the fire department conducted a slightly irregular inspection of the chocolate factory. They are of course entirely within their rights to examine the premises whenever they feel like it, but we weren't due for a checkup or anything--most of the employees have agreed that the FD were summoned by the clothing retailer next-door to us, as part of the ongoing "You Are Too Noisy" lawsuit. It doesn't really matter why they were there, though. The point is that in the course of this inspection, somebody took a close look at the store licenses. And a week later--last Thursday afternoon, just as I was packing up to go home for the day--Gian came into the kitchen and said, "Don't bother setting up the croissants for tomorrow."

Come to find out, our café doesn't have a kitchen license, and it never has. This isn't a matter of an oversight, or an expiration--the owner of the business was trying to cut corners when they constructed the pastry kitchen in the basement, two summers ago, and never bothered to apply for the right to run an oven. As sure as god made little green apples, it has come back to bite him, or rather his staff in Cambridge. There has been no baking for over a week now, and let me tell you, my kitchen is no longer a happy place. Drew (my subaltern) and I immediately contracted a terrible case of Baker's Gloom, which worsened steadily as we ran out of yogurt, shortbread cookies, and fruit tart shells. By Wednesday there was nothing for us to do but thaw and cut cakes, then head upstairs to help out in the café. Not quite what I had envisioned when I took the helm as pastry chef.

The main pastry kitchen in Walpole is now making tart shells and shortbread for us, and sending them weekly along with the usual frozen cakes and macarons. But there is no way for them to replace the pastries usually produced fresh every morning--croissants, apple tart, raspberry tart, cannele bordelais, madeleines--so these items (which sell out every day, without exception) have simply been discontinued. The customers are volubly unhappy, and I can't say I blame them, but there is nothing that we can do. The owner must apply for the license during the customary enrollment period, meaning that I will resume my baking duties in mid-June at the earliest.

Needless to say, this makes me a sad kitty, especially since it coincides so neatly with a letter from ECA confirming my acceptance to the school. Dad came to town to see Si in The Fall last week (he might have eaten one of our last croissants when he visited me at the store), hand-carrying the mail that had accumulated at my parents' house. There it is, my "unconditional acceptance," in black and white, and I get to refuse it. Because I have refused it, for many of the same reasons that I refused my acceptance to SMFA over a year ago. I've talked with Paul, with Kim, with Silas, with Mom and Dad, with friends at work, and pondered the matter to death, but it just isn't the right school. They aren't going to teach me what I want to learn. There are a lot of reasons for this refusal, but never mind the rest of the obstacles--money, visas, housing, employment--if I can't mandate the terms of my education when I am a fucking graduate student, then when can I?

Not that it gives me great satisfaction to decline, because this decision very literally sends me back to the drawing board. Before I can even consider reapplying to graduate programs I'm going to have to get off my carc-ass and put together a fresh portfolio. More immediately, declining means that I am cut adrift again. I have no idea what I am going to do or where I am going to go in August when our lease expires. I have no desire to stay in Boston, especially if my job continues in the current unsatisfactory vein (as well it might, if they decide that baking on-site is more trouble than it is worth in revenue). In a little while I imagine that I will be better able to enjoy the sensation of not-knowing, but right now it's still pretty overwhelming. I wanted Edinburgh to work so badly, and it just didn't, and I have to start looking all over again.

Kim made the very excellent point that I based my applications pretty exclusively on location, rather than researching the schools themselves. I wasted a lot of time and energy applying to schools that I wasn't interested in, because my interest in the program did not initially seem important. In hindsight this is a glaringly idiotic approach, but at the time I was simply desperate to keep one foot in academia, because being out of college was so disorienting. I think I may finally--after two years--have grown out of my panic. I don't really need or want an MFA, insofar as the degree itself will forward my goals. I don't want to be a professor, and that is what the MFA is for. If I can acquire an MFA while studying and producing art that interests me--classical, objective, principally figurative drawing and painting--then hooray, kudos. But it needn't eclipse the point of going back to school, which is TO LEARN SOMETHING.

It's incredibly frustrating to deal with issues that one has been ignoring determinedly for two years. And it's incredibly frustrating to be set back from one's goals because of one's own impatience to begin, to get going, to get on with it. These are not new and surprising facets of my character, after all. But presumably this, too, is part of the educational process. I'm trying to be patient. I'm trying to maintain a little detachment, a little perspective. This isn't a race, what's my hurry? There will be time.

GRRRRRR ARRRRGH.