Oklahoma!

on moving

So, some personal news, as the kids used to say: I accepted a position as the Artist in Residence at the University of Central Oklahoma for the upcoming school year. I am so, so excited to share this news. I will teach a mix of intro and upper level classes, do a little advising: some grad students, some undergrads, help with the undergrad creative writing club (they call themselves the Golden Pony Guild!), and finish the book (and maybe a couple ceramics projects) while participating in various community activities and riding horses and walking around one of Oklahoma’s many lakes with Millie.

Ori and I went down there last week to find an apartment and drive around, to get a sense of where things were and what to expect. The sky was fabulously big and full of wild weather (had a couple of tornado watches while there, maybe a little hail). We did some grocery store tourism at Crest Foods, ate a meal at Braum’s, drank way too much espresso at Elemental Coffee (highly recommend all of these things), and also looked at a couple of barns where I might get to ride and possibly keep a horse, both of which were mere minutes from campus.

Old North, the oldest building on campus, on a rainy afternoon.

I’ve started looking, a little, for a horse, but it’s still premature. I am hoping to find a horse project: someone who might be a little misunderstood, in need of care and training and regular rules and boundaries. Not a rescue: I have worked with plenty of those sorts, but maybe a horse who’s young and green and doesn’t know how to do anything. Or a horse that has already been started and caused problems for someone else. About once a year, on average, someone tries to give a horse. There is a reason for this: these horses are usually irreparably broken in some important and vital way. They do not understand how to be a horse, or maybe they are physically broken too. They rear or they bolt or spook at things that aren’t there or kick or they bite people or some combination of these issues. I am not necessarily looking for a free horse, because they usually end up costing a lot to fix, but we’ll see what happens. Writing and riding seem to be related for me, and I am ready for both again.

We also found an apartment. I am really excited; it’s in a newer building and close to campus. I am an asthmatic, overly sensitive to mold and smoke and dust, so we like that it’s newer. We also saw my office, which is gloriously wood paneled and has a window and bookshelves and feels absolutely cozy. I cannot wait to write in there and meet with students and fill it with plants. We are bringing some plants from our current place, but I also hope to pick up a few more.

And everyone is so welcoming there. Everyone is so lovely, so kind and open and generous and enthusiastic and brilliant. People are making art and they are passionate about teaching. I loved our visit and everyone we met. We felt cared for in a way that has not been the case for us for a long time.

Somewhere near the Kansas-Oklahoma border, I think

A part of me has wanted to move for a while, ideally to teach, to write, have narrative distance, perhaps to leave the Midwest altogether, but this was the first year I actually went on the academic job market. I updated my letters of recommendation, wrote teaching statements and cover letters, and applied for four jobs. One of the visiting positions was one for which I was no longer qualified (they wanted someone earlier-career, without a book). One I never heard from at all, but it was clear there was an internal candidate based on how the job description was drafted. I was a finalist for one other tenure track job, and then I got this job in Oklahoma. Success!

When I tell my friends up north, here, that I am going to Oklahoma for the year (and who knows, maybe longer?), many are shocked. Why would I ever leave where we are now? There is much to like, objectively, on paper, here. We are steps to public transit, in a very walkable, “cool,” neighborhood, with fancy coffees and many restaurants and two bookstores. Some kind of liberal paradise, my friends say, though I am a leftist. We are six or seven blocks from Lake Michigan and around the corner from Trader Joe’s and many other grocery stores and close to other small shops and things to do, and if we get on the CTA or the Metra we can go to the Art Institute or the Museum of Contemporary Art or the theatre, for which Chicago is somewhat famous.

Of these things, the lake is probably what I will miss most. When friends come from out of town to visit, people from landlocked states or else California, a part of them does not understand that you cannot see across the lake. It is simply too big. One friend once asked if you could see across when the weather was better, less foggy, because I took her on a cloudy day. The scale is hard to explain. Sometimes, on a very clear day, you can see Chicago from the north side, or maybe Gary, Indiana, but that is not across. Michigan looks at us the same way, just big blue expanse, endless waves, this ancient inland sea.

I will miss our neighbors, and our friends: soup nights, waving hello, breakfasts and dinners and hanging out and shared vegetables and exchanges on the street.

But, to be truthful, I will not miss much else. Suddenly, we live in a trendy neighborhood, and everything is more expensive with many new neighbors and increased density and although I am a huge proponent of eliminating single family zoning altogether, I think I need to live in a place where there is big sky nearby, instead of big lake. Everything feels far away here, inaccessible financially or geographically, with hours spent in traffic if we drive. We cannot afford to go out, not really. When we lived in Pittsburgh, we went to so many shows—great theatre, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the symphony, and so many readings. Things were cheap and you could just go without making a big deal of it. And I had ceramics community, where I knew lots of artists because it was a cheap city where you could make art. I was a member of a ceramics cooperative. There were no worries about finding and paying for parking, or delays on the CTA impeding your ability to get somewhere. Danes avoid sharing negative feelings among groups of friends, to avoid disrupting the hygge, which I saw sometimes when I worked for a Danish company. I think there is some of that pressure here too. To not talk about how high the cost of living has gotten here, or the taxes, which feel oppressive, or how nearly everyone in our neighborhood is ten or twenty or thirty years older than us, because those are the people who can afford to live here. The winters are long and gray, and that is hard on us both. The school system is supposedly great—we live in a desirable elementary district—but we of course don’t use this. Lots of people are busy with their children. I get it: their children are the center of their lives. But this makes it a bit of a lonely place for people like us: we do not have kids, and we are not part of a greater literary or creative community, or an academic community here, and so we operate on a periphery that has felt, at times, impenetrable.

So, we’re leaving here for a new place. We’ll see how it goes. I’m so excited. I can’t wait.