The Boy Actually Goes Back To School

So off we went from San Francisco to Tucson with baby in tow. 1980 or there abouts. The Ex- had convinced me that I should finish my degree and enroll in a Creative Writing Program. She was concerned that I was not as educated as she was, and might have self worth issues. This was the woman that didn't want me washing dishes, because the man wasn't supposed to be doing that, but she also never did them herself. I looked through the choices of Creative Writing Programs around the country and decided on U of A because Tucson was a mid-sized city and I wanted to hedge my bets on finding a job when we got there. We sold my motorcycle, rented a trailer and a car and went to Phoenix. The Ex's friends towed the trailer the rest of the way and we found an apartment. It took me almost three weeks to find a job. I was getting scared. We got food stamps and I went to get a free bag of groceries every week. The school wouldn't take me full time because my grades from 1970-72 weren't good enough. I was also writing a new novel at the time and wanted to finish the first draft. The Ex finally found a job and her parents paid for day care so I could make classes that I was finally in and so I could sleep some, since I was working graveyard. The classes were nothing to write home about. I had one poetry teacher who thought I was brilliant, and was going to get me in the program, "if I was still there next semester" (that's what he said) Well, he had seen my sort before I guess. The only thing I recall writing was an abstract poem about Kandinsky's Sky Blue. If I find it, I'll put it here.

The Ex went to LA for job and took our daughter along. I was tired and disgusted with working seven nights a week and making hardly any money and the Writing Program was rinky dink and they didn't really want me, so I quit all over again. I followed the Ex to LA and began my search for the perfect paragraph- for years I was writing the seamless paragraph. I wanted to be like Flaubert and tap the cadence of my words out as I wrote them.