Visions and Revisions

Since I won't be going to grad school this fall, I figure I should direct some of my carefully hoarded dimes towards domestic matters. I'd really love to pay off one of my loans, but I'm not quite in a financial position to do that just yet. And here we have a more pressing (ha ha!) matter: wisdom teeth! I went to the dentist last week and to my complete delight and astonishment I have no cavities. I haven't been to the dentist in six years, and in that time I've worked at Ben and Jerry's, Starbucks, Two Fat Cats, and Burdick's; not to mention going to college, which is probably just as bad for one's teeth as sugar. So I was pretty pleased. The dentist was a very nice woman who charged me the student fee for an exam and some x-rays to see what the situation is with my troublesome wolf teeth. I am showcasing them here not because I think anyone is particularly interested (except my parents), but because I REALLY LIKE X-RAYS.


The upper right tooth in this photo is the reason that I went to the dentist; although it erupted straight, it is out of alignment with the rest of my teeth and bites into the side of my cheek. It's gotta go. Fortunately, since it is fully erupted it can be removed through a simple extraction (rather than surgically).

The bottom right tooth is blessedly dormant. I can practically hear it humming peaceably to itself as it twiddles its thumbs in my jawbone.


The upper left tooth is about 80% erupted, and the problem is that although it emerged straight out of the gum, it stopped erupting. Because it sits so low, it is difficult to brush and tends to trap food particles, presenting an ideal situation for what the dentist referred to as "extreme gingivitis"--aka infection. Once she found that I have no dental insurance, she assured me that because it wasn't presenting any immediate threat, I could probably ignore it for several years. Sweet of her, but I'd rather sidestep that issue entirely and have it removed. This is the same one that was bothering me last August, and again around Thanksgiving.

The bottom left tooth is obviously an accident waiting to happen.

The title is a joke! Ha ha! Scout is in heat every three weeks or so, since I can't get her spayed, but it is also 93 degrees today, which for Massachusetts is verging on the demonic. I went out this morning in a fruitless search for molé but then I spent the rest of the day indoors, working on silly projects like this one.

iMovie hasn't changed much since I was in high school, which is to say it still sucks.

April 24, 2008

April 25, 2009

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.

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea."

-from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

I'm going to go ahead and fast-forward from Day One in Scotland to Day Seven, because by the time I flew home I had begun to recuperate from The Plague and thus I already have my account of our momentous last day of Waiting Interminably all written up.



Saturday afternoon Paul and I arrived on the Isle of Skye. Finding our hostel of choice closed until 4pm, we drifted around Portree in search of entertainment and eventually alighted on the Tourist Information Office. While I was perusing postcards and contemplating the unending agony that comes of lugging around an overloaded duffel bag, Paul asked about directions to the Talisker distillery (one of the main reasons we had come to Skye). In the course of a few minutes our itinerary for the next two days smashed into tiny, nasty bits, because 1) the buses on Skye don't run on Sundays and, b) the Talisker distillery is closed on Sundays. The woman at the TI was more than willing to direct us to Talisker on Monday, but since we had to be back in Edinburgh on Monday night---and traveling there would eat up the better part of a day (though we had yet to realize JUST HOW MUCH)--the distillery visit was scrapped. Damn. I have no particular love for whisky and Paul had been to Talisker before, and we came up with the alternate plan of going to The Old Man of Storr pretty much instantly, but still. It was a bit disappointing. The woman very helpfully produced a slew of brochures and time-tables to coordinate our journey back to Edinburgh on Monday (bus to ferry to train), and that was the best we could do. At least we would see the Glen Finnan viaduct on the way back, and perhaps arrive in Edinburgh early enough to climb Arthur's Seat, right?

Oh, if only.

The weekend we were in Scotland occupied an uneasy position in the fine world of UK travel, as it happens. On Saturday night/Sunday morning, the UK "sprang forward," and then most of the bus and train schedules, business' operating hours, and seasonal prices underwent a weekend transformation, since April marks the beginning of the tourist season (apparently). So when Paul and I presented ourselves at the Portree bus stop at 8:15 on Monday morning, we were slightly mystified when no bus arrived. While we were waiting we had plenty of leisure to examine the rather confusing bus schedule posted in the shelter, and we found that the timetable had changed that very morning. Until March 26, on weekday mornings there was a bus to Armadale (the ferry landing) at 8:15AM. Beginning March 27, there were buses at 7:30AM and 9:15AM. So we waiting another hour--and neither of us are good at waiting, but what can you do?--and caught the 9:15 bus. In Armadale we found that the next ferry would leave at 11:35, which gave us yet another hour to kill. This, I have to admit, was not a tragedy, because right next to the terminal we stumbled across this privately-produced "nature walk" that was half organic herb garden, half installation art, and I fell totally in love with it. I can't even describe it, but I took pictures. It was magical.



We caught the ferry in due course and arrived in Mallaig, on the Scottish mainland, just before noon. Stepping into the train station, Paul and I are summarily informed by the ticket agent that the rails are undergoing construction through May (THIS must have been why my beautiful Jacobite steam train wasn't running), and the next bus that can take us to Fort William, where we will be able to catch a southbound train to Glasgow and thence to Edinburgh, is at 4:05PM. We will not be seeing Glen Finnan; we will not be getting back to the city until 10:30PM; and we have four hours to kill in the emptiest little fishing village you ever set eyes on.

Did I mention that neither of us are good at waiting?

We drank a pot of tea in one of the restaurants. We visited the microscopic public library so that Paul could use the internet to make plans for Italy. We ate lunch in the other restaurant. (I had Cullen Skink simply because it I wanted to eat something that looks like it says Cullen Stink, but actually it is quite a good fish and leek chowder.) Nearly all of the shops in town were closed for winter (and for good reason), but we visited all of the businesses that were open. Twice. We danced to Tom Jones' "Sex Bomb" in The Spar. I blew my nose a few hundred times. We poked through The Fishermen's Mission, where they were holding a secondhand book charity sale, so that I could pick up some reading material for the trip home. To say that we passed a very dull four hours would be a serious understatement, and all the while I kept thinking of the things I had planned to do on our last day in Scotland that were now out of the question. I was eventually reduced to standing in the middle of the (deserted) street, bellowing, "I JUST WANT TO GET OUT OF MALLAIG!"

(Then I blew my nose again.)

In retrospect, hitchhiking as far as Fort William might have been a fine adventure, but it was a drizzly sort of day, my duffel bag wasn't getting any lighter, and there was no guarantee that there were in fact trains running out of Fort William before 5:00 anyhow. Mostly we just kept kicking ourselves--and the woman at Tourist Information--for looking at the wrong bus schedule, because had we taken the 7:30AM bus out of Portree, we would have connected with an earlier ferry and consequently with an earlier bus out of Mallaig. Not that it would have made things magically all better because we'd still have missed out on the viaduct--which I eventually glimpsed for a split-second out of the bus window--but we might have spent a more enjoyable afternoon in Glasgow or Edinburgh. Oh well.



It was probably the longest day of travel in history, and Paul and I were both in acute "PLEASE JUST KILL ME NOW" mode, convulsing on the floor of the train and foaming at the mouth, long before we were halfway to our destination. Especially given the prospect of prolonged plane travel the following day.

Lesson learned: travel with Paul is most enjoyable ON FOOT, e.g. backpacking, and I invite him on my hypothetical trek of the AMT, but in future I will take cultural trips involving lots of art by myself, or possibly with Kim.

Also, there are good reasons that northern Europeans traditionally head to Mallorca, Portugal, and Tunisia about this time of year. Best to respect that tradition.

So I had a cold--in every stage of its glorious, week-long manifestations--for pretty much the entire time we were in Scotland. Not a bad cold, I wasn't confined to my bed or delirious with fever, but enough of an illness to take the edge off of my enjoyment of pretty much everything. It was maddening to be aware of my lack of enthusiasm, because grad school or no grad school, this was the first vacation I'd had in a long time, and I wanted to savor it. I felt terribly sorry for Paul, too; what a joy to travel with someone who has to blow her nose every ten minutes.



But the first day, at least, I determinedly denied what I referred to as my "symptoms," and right after we'd checked into the über-hip Budget Backpacker's Hostel (painted in such loud pairings of complementary colors that I can only assume it was intentional), I decreed that we would head up the Royal Mile to see Edinburgh Castle.



The castle is everything a castle ought to be--which is to say, one can easily imagine that it was a perfectly miserable place to live during the middle ages--except that it is very clean, the armory has been replaced with a gift shop and café, and the original inhabitants have been replaced with scores of shrieking or snogging students. The city was much colder than I'd anticipated, mostly due to the merciless wind blustering in off the sea, and I reflected that I should have brought my wool peacoat instead of a sweater and a rain jacket. But the views of the city are impressive despite the snarly weather, the wax figures illustrating the story of the crown jewels are hilarious, and my exchange with the elderly ticket agent at the entrance is forever engraved in my memory.

"One adult for the castle, please?"

"Aright, that'll be ten pound seventy." I fumble through my wallet in the first of many attempts to figure out the system of British coins. "I like yer red hair."

"Thank you!"

"Ye know Mary Queen of Scots had red hair."

Yes I know this. "Did she?"

"Aye, and they cut off her head."

Quite a ringing character endorsement. "What are you suggesting?"

"Mebbe ye should keep yer hat on."

What dry humor these Scots have. "Duly noted."

"My daughter had red hair like that."

Expecting that this was another of those stories wherein I am regaled with the fading of one's brilliance into auburn or brown (or grey)--I get a lot of that when I work at the chocolate counter--I jokingly ask, "And does she still have her head?"

"Actually she died a few months ago."

".......I'm sorry!"

"Aye she 'ad a stroke..." He continues to add medical details, but I am deaf to everything but the sound of my own flaming embarrassment. I bid him a cheerful thank you and farewell, then scuttle over to where Paul has been waiting throughout this dialogue.

"Oh my god," I mutter. "If I open my mouth will you help me shove my foot down my throat?"

I've never met Jessica in person, but posts like this convince me that our approaches to inter-personal relationships are very similar. (I suppose that means that we would either really get along, or we really wouldn't.)

...I want to make an attempt at an answer to two questions that people often search for when they arrive at my blog: how does one seduce a Scorpio woman and how does one manage to keep her?

First, I would not recommend trying to seduce a Scorpio of either gender. It’s just probably not going to work. There are methods I’ll describe in a moment, but the first warning is: don’t. It’s not gonna happen. When a Scorpio wants you, you’ll know it, and she or he will go to any lengths to quietly, effectively, and absolutely seduce you. We’re a passionate and brave (even arrogant) people, and we’ll figure out what makes you tick and own it.

Ok, so let’s say you want a Scorpio and s/he is not paying attention to you. This doesn’t mean s/he is playing hard-to-get. Of the Scorpios I’ve known, I’ve never seen one play hard-to-get. We simply decide on you or don’t. So either s/he is simply not interested or s/he hasn’t noticed you yet. If s/he knows you and isn’t interested, it’s fairly hopeless for you, but there is a strategy (which I’ll discuss in a minute). If s/he doesn’t know you yet, be brave and introduce yourself.

Option 1: S/he’s not interested

Solution: Back off. Rethink this. Do you really, really want to be with this person? Obsessively? Devoutly? Are there any other options on the face of the earth for you? If you’re at all uncertain that this is who you want to be with, go somewhere else. Get out while you still can, because once you start something with a Scorpio, it’s going to be a wild ride. Think about this. Don’t think about it for a few days, think about it for months or years. When you’re absolutely certain that this Scorpio is Your Scorpio, tell them. Give it to them in its raw, uncoded, honest form (they’ll know if you’re lying). The only way to deal with a Scorp is to play on that final frontier where true risk takes place. Risk is your trump card.

Option 2: S/he hasn’t noticed you yet

Solution: Be brave. Find out about them and talk to them about themselves (this works for most signs, but surprisingly, not all!). Don’t be showy, aggressive, clingy, needy, or otherwise Too Strong or Too Fragile. Scorps can see straight through your bullshit, and they’re not interested in it. They want to engage with your deep dark soul. Tell them a secret.

If the Scorp is interested, you’ll know, and you’ll be claimed. If s/he’s not, refer to Option 1/Solution 1.

What a Scorp wants most is deep, undying loyalty. This makes relationships and friendships between Scorps undissolvable even when they treat each other badly. Scorps are likely to be a little evil, but it’s realistic: not everyone is good all the time. Can you handle a little evil? If you can’t, find yourself another sign. If you can, you’re our type. Now the only challenge is to hang on for dear life without seeming clingy.

Ok, so let’s say you have somehow been lucky enough to win yourself a Scorpio. Either you’ve attracted them and they’ve “decided on you” with that particular Scorp voracity, or you’ve slowly won them over, and now you have them. How do you get rid of them?

Like all dragons, Scorps have a soft spot, and this soft spot can be hit with Jealousy. Depending on the length of your relationship and the Scorp’s investment in it, you may need more or less Jealousy to hit the spot, but the arrow will eventually go in, and you will lose the Scorp, possibly amid draconian flames, forever.

I just want to warn you before you go about hurting a Scorp. Reread that entry on the Scorpio Woman. If we’re hurt and we take pity on you we might let you get away relatively unscathed, but don’t count on our pity. If you destroy us, we’ll destroy you, and we will heal, but you won’t.

Ok, so you’ve been warned, and you really are tired of your Scorp. Start an affair, fall in love with someone else, or otherwise cheat on them emotionally or physically with one or more people. Don’t tell them about this beforehand or involve them in the process. Do it, then tell them. This will get rid of your Scorpio. It may take multiple passes, but eventually you will kill them. (And then they will kill you. Which is why, if you didn’t want a Scorpio, you should never have gotten involved in the first place.)

Jaime, the assistant manager at the chocolate factory, has a plan for zodiac-themed chocolates. The Scorpio flavor is absinthe.

Here I'd planned to post all of my little travel tales within the first week of getting back, but I have been a busy girl. There was work, of course--Easter brought a sudden deluge of business to the store, and then I was tasked with training one of my coworkers as the subaltern pastry chef. Then some beautiful spring days involving lots of open windows prompted me to repaint my room, which project somehow extended to repainting the scuffed-up stairwells. Then I went to a céilí, if you can believe it, and publicly demonstrated just how badly I coordinate the movements produced by my feet with a musical rhythm registered by my ears. And most importantly, at my behest Silas absconded with The Iron Pot on his most recent trip to New York, so I've suddenly been baking vast quantities of bread. For over two years I've hung on to this recipe that I found in The Oregonian for no-knead bread with a really long rise time, and finally I got to try it out. I may never buy bread again. My parents may never see The Iron Pot again.

But to the point. Photos are up here for your perusal. I may be taking some of them back to the shop (the photoshop, ha ha ha!), or removing others--there are only so many mediocre pictures of trees and mountains that I will scroll through before I start deleting without mercy--but there they are, hooray. We'd gotten all the way to Skye before I realized that the astronomical figure on the bottom right of my camera's screen was the number of photos still available, and that I could increase the size and resolution from "snapshot" to "billboard" quality without maxing out the memory card. So some of the earlier ones are on the grainy side. No matter.

Oh yes--and I wanted to mention aloud that while I was away, Scout turned one year old. She is a grown-up! She was very angry with me when I returned, I had been gone forever and left her with a lot of smelly people who do not give her frozen soybeans. I was not allowed to touch her or to exist within ten feet of her feline orbit for the first two hours--she hissed and growled and generally expressed her disapproval of my negligence. But then she forgave me, and demonstrated her continued devotion by peeing on everyone's belongings but mine. That's love, right there.

Shortly before I left for Scotland, one of the managers approached me about switching my baking days to Friday, Saturday, Sunday. The head pastry guy had been having some health problems, which, compounded with a generally no-need-to-rush work ethic, prompted the need for a faster and more flexible person in the kitchen on weekends. There was talk of getting a walkie-talkie or baby monitor to communicate between floors, so that if the café got slammed or needed to send someone on break, they could call me up to help out (the ovens and fans are noisy, nobody in the kitchen can hear someone calling down the stairs).

I said I would be delighted, but because my mother taught me how to bargain I also pointed out politely that on days I work as the kitchen staff I don't receive tips because I don't have to deal with the public. We make good tips, sometimes as much as two dollars an hour over our usual pay. Spending more days assigned to the kitchen on the logic that I can (and will) wind up in the café would mean I was losing money while still having to wrangle customers. And even on the days that I don't get summoned upstairs, I spend my surplus hours scrubbing floors, breaking down boxes, making pavé, and generally being useful. Recession or no recession, they know very well that I am worth more than what they are paying me.

They acknowledged my point, and I expected the subject to be dropped in my absence. It probably would have been, but the head pastry guy abruptly announced that he was going home to Puerto Rico, and gave his two weeks' notice. Overnight I was transformed! I am now the undisputed sovereign of the kitchen, with a full time schedule and a dollar an hour pay raise. Part of me wants to quibble that I am talented and well-educated twenty-four-year-old white woman who is still wasting her time making an hourly wage in food service, but another part if me says YAY! I'M A BAKER! I will spend my summer making a living on cakes and croissants, bitches, how many of you can say the same?

There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself, for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. [...]

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, On Self-Reliance

I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about. [...]

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

"Have you always been evil, or did working in retail make you that way?"

I had hoped, when I left for Scotland, to be able to post some kind of definitive anecdote on my return--either saying I'd marched straight into the registry after my inspirational tour of the ECA, and immediately signed the admissions papers; or that I'd suffered terrible food poisoning at the hands of a spoiled haggis, spent a week in a Scottish hospital, been robbed by a highwayman, and never want to set food in the country again. Something certain. I love traveling, I love the pressure it puts on the understood boundaries of oneself, and I realize now that I was earnestly hoping for some kind of transformation. (Otherwise why would I go to Scotland in March, the off-season, when the country is still in hibernation and cannot reasonably be expected to have its most engaging face on.) I was hoping to love it or hate it; I wanted the country itself to exercise some influence, so that I wouldn't feel that this next chapter of my life relies so terrifyingly and exclusively on my decision.

Well, it didn't happen. Paul and I had a fine trip and later I will be posting stories about our adventures, but I am no closer to making a decision about grad school that I was when I left. I find this very disappointing, as you must imagine, and moreover frustrating. (Even though the sentiment has very little to do with anything I did or saw, the money I spent, the food I ate, the people I spoke with, or the hundreds of times I had to blow my nose.) The decision still stands before me, looming larger and more insistent by the day, because if I am going to go I have to put the paperwork in motion soon--immediately--and if I am not, then I have to determine another course of action, because as much as I enjoy my current job I have no desire to spend another year in the chocolate factory.

The school itself is...fine. The Edinburgh College of Art is housed in a handful of large, well-equipped, well-maintained buildings in the Old Town of the city. A second-year MFA Painting student named Kathryn led my tour. She was a good match, since she hails from Mississippi and got her undergraduate degree in the States, and she was able to give a candid and particularly American perspective on the college's academic structure. (Sadly she is a married student, and couldn't answer some of my more practical questions about living and working in the UK.) Some of the discrepancies she highlighted didn't faze me, like the particularly British emphasis on the written aspect of the degree, and the 10,000 word accompaniment to one's degree show (I got home and found that my thesis was 24,000 words), and the fact that a lot of students are coming straight out of their undergraduate programs with none of the traditional American "time off."

It does bother me (as it clearly bothered her) that the written and practical aspects of one's degree are so separate. I don't remember her talking about professors at all; weekly critiques are apparently peer-based, and I confess that I have never found that arrangement very productive. I was disappointed to find that apart from some lectures on 1980s Postmodern Theory (which Kathryn found so dull that she stopped attending) there is little inclusion of art history in the curriculum. (Yes, the library and museums are all at one's disposal, but still.) The studios are nice, but shared (about four students per space); the sculpture studios are closed to painting majors "for safety reasons," which means finding other (and inevitably more expensive) avenues for building stretchers; the building hours are strictly enforced, and students are not given keys to the building, so there's none of this loosey-goosey self-directed semi-residential studio dynamic that was fostered at Reed. I'm okay with that, I think. The student body is very international, which pleased me, and the work that they produce is very...diverse. This is always a stumbling block for me, because as much I want to appreciate the creative freedom of the time period I live in, I don't have a lot of interest in non-objective painting; never mind the fact that I can never find anything to say about an installation piece made of torn and painted fabric strung across a room with shoelaces.

Sounds to me like the college will collect their fees and leave me to it. They won't teach me anything, unless a session of peer revisions proves unprecedentedly enlightening. When all is said and done, living in an academic setting again would hopefully provide the impetus and motivation to work that I so desperately lack. The question is whether I feel that two years' motivation is worth some $30,000 that I must perforce beg from my parents (because I can't afford to buy an MFA any more than I can afford to buy a private island in the South Pacific). Now, I'll be fair, I don't feel that I learned a damn thing about painting at Reed, either. But when I decided to attend Reed (and, after my first two farcical "Visual Concepts" classes, to stay at Reed), it was with the full (if not always enthusiastic) awareness that I wanted a liberal arts education, not merely an art education. The position has changed now; the MFA is an art degree, and it should be focusing on art-making. It makes some sense that an MFA program doesn't offer art history classes; I don't like it, but that isn't what the curriculum is about. What I have a hard time accepting is the chasm between my wish to be a "master" in the fine art of my choice, and the fact that I can't find a school that actually teaches mastery in the fine art of my choice. How can I specialize and compromise at the same time?

I can't help but wonder if I simply won't find a school with a taught curriculum that suits my "traditional" approach to image-making, and maybe a decent school in a good location is simply the next best thing. Or at least, enough to be getting on with. The pamphlet outlining the MFA graduate curriculum includes a list of the top 10 reasons that students choose ECA, and--tellingly--the number one reason is location. I find this refreshingly straightforward but I've got to admit that Edinburgh isn't terribly prepossessing. It's pretty grungy, to be honest. There's a reason it used to be called Auld Reekie; on damp days the city still has an odor. The Old Town is winding and narrow, dim, and claustrophobic; it was bounded by fortress walls and consequently built upwards for hundreds of years. There's a castle, yes, and a lot of interesting history, but the Edinburgers don't coexist with that history, they declare it a UNESCO World Heritage Site, install a lot of postcard racks, and then move to the suburbs. The city center's focus on exclusively seasonal tourist traffic (Edinburgh doubles in size during the Festival in August) reminded me a bit of Nürnberg (for the Kriskindlesmarkt) or Munich (for Oktoberfest), but unlike those cities, Edinburgh doesn't seem to have a lot character apart from all that. Maybe I am splitting hairs. But even Paul observed that it seemed a bit run-down compared to the last time he visited. The point here is that I was not enchanted. Edinburgh has none of the wild beauty that I saw in the Highlands. And when I consider the appalling cost of living in the UK, the trouble of getting a visa, finding an affordable flat, moving my belongings, and abandoning my cat (which feels like a betrayal in itself)--not to mention the inevitable academic frustrations of long, meaningless papers, uncooperative administration, boring lectures, and professors who have no interest in fostering my old-fashioned brand of painting--I want to love where I am living.

So, poop. By all appearances the ECA has failed on both criteria. One part of me thinks that is more than ample reason to reexamine my goals, shelve grad school for the present, and go in search of other adventures. Another part of me wisely observes that no school, no city, and no situation in life is ever going to be spot-on, and holding out for a summons from God is an unrealistic and immature way of looking at education (and life). Not to mention a very poor excuse for sitting around and doing nothing. Oh dearie me, my parents are willing to pay for a master's degree and I get all hung up on the meaning of a "master's" degree. Excellent work is never produced out of the blue; it requires practice, frustration, and copious amounts of waste--of money, of materials, of time and energy. I went to Scotland hoping for transformation, and just because I didn't find it is no reason to dismiss my admission to the college. Without question I still want to get out of the States; I didn't fall in love with Scotland and I can see that I wouldn't want to live there forever, but perhaps we can just be friends and I can live and work there fruitfully for a couple of years. You can do anything for a year! This is the doctrine that drove my family's peregrinations across the globe throughout for most of my life, why is it suddenly not enough? Have I gone soft???

I don't know.

The Sun illuminates your sixth house this month. During this cycle, you take more pride in the work you do and in your health routines than any other time of the year. You are sorting through the experiences of the last several months, separating the worthwhile from the worthless. This is a good time to build your skills, to get organized, and to attend to your health and wellbeing. It’s a great time to make improvements to your regular routines. Your self-esteem and your ego are tied up in the work you do and in the services you give. Details are more important to you now. It's time to bring order to your life by focusing on the little things that make up the whole. This cycle presents an opportunity to get rid of what doesn't work in your life, while also discovering what does. You could seek distinction and strive towards perfection in your work. Efficiency should be your goal now. Your physical health, as well as the relationship between your body and your mind, are in focus.

Venus is retrograde from March 6-April 17. As the planet of love and values, Venus retrograde periods are periods during which we re-assess what—and who—we value. It is a period that most astrologers consider inopportune for getting married or starting a new relationship. Major financial undertakings are not advised during this period as well. Venus retrograde cycles are good times for creating budgets and financial plans, and for re-thinking our personal relationships.

Venus continues to move through your solar fifth house this month. Your popularity is on an upward trend during this cycle as others find you especially attractive and friendly. You may have the desire to dress well and in good taste. There is strength in your feelings of love and the power of attraction, which may open the door to new romantic relationships. Yet, you are not aggressive in your approach to love. Instead, you attract more if you allow yourself to be pursued during this cycle. Creative self-expression of any kind is favored at this time. You will also thoroughly enjoy artistic, musical, or cultural events and activities, especially in the company of a loved one. At this time, you instinctively know how to place yourself in the best light in order to make a good impression on others. Any love affair begun now will be characterized by good cheer, having fun, and a fair share of emotional drama! With Venus retrograde until the 17th, however, some complications in these areas of life may arise, urging you to re-assess matters rather than forge ahead, after which matters become increasingly clearer and more straightforward.

Mercury continues to transit your work and health sector until the 14. Your approach to work during this cycle is pleasant, happy, and logical for the most part, unless you allow worry or scattered energy to enter the picture. You might also enjoy analyzing different health or nutrition programs. You are inclined to want to learn new work skills, or to improve your skills and output in terms of work. There is likely to be more activity, movement, contact, and communications with co-workers now. You tend to take more interest in organizing your working environment--and this is an excellent time to do so, as you are especially objective and intelligent when it comes to getting a handle on your daily affairs and all of the "little things" that contribute to a feeling of efficiency and competency.

from Café Astrology