Magic Touch

I was recently admitted to the MFA program at Portland State University. I took the recent publication of a story I wrote nearly three years ago as a sign that maybe I wasn't half bad at this writing thing, and did I really want to teach dance for the rest of my life? So pushed out three applications and nearly $500 in fees (the fee to apply for Hunter College in NY is $125. No, I didn't get in). After I my applications went floating out into the ether I started to second guess my thought process. Sure, I had a story published. Yes, that story was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, but really, I hadn't finished anything more than an email in three years. When I found out I got into Portland State I was elated. That was my number one choice, mainly because I didn't want to leave Portland. I didn't want this whole grad school thing to disrupt my life too much. I like it here. I like my job and my friends and... my job. I feel lucky. I didn't want some back burner dream of someday completing a book-length work of fiction to interrupt the good thing I had going. After I found out they weren't going to give me any money I had to pause and really start to weigh the pros and cons. I talked to a poetry student who had recently finished the program. She said that she probably wouldn't have gone if she had to pay. She said that she as now applying to teach at various colleges in the Portland area and was also applying at New Seasons and Whole Foods. Then she flip flopped and said that it was a great education and if I could afford the debt it was worth going, then she said that there was someone important on the other line and she had to go. She'd put me in touch with a fiction MFA student. She hasn't yet. I talked to a professor I had while at USC. She didn't beat around the bush. She was like a hard-nosed detective in a noir movie, ready to sell it to me straight. Look here kid, it's a crazy world out there. It's ridiculously competitive she said. Not getting an assistantship does not mean I'm not a good writer. With an MFA you won't be teaching at the upper levels of continuing education. You'll be teaching at a community college or online to the wives of truckers in Oklahoma. She said that just getting into grad school was a feat and she thought I would regret not going, that my writing would benefit greatly. I would benefit greatly. Was twenty some thousand dollars really so much? I felt like I needed some guidance, but not from someone who knew me, or was a writer. I needed someone who was impartial and unbiased. I remembered a girl I'd met at a bar about a year ago. Her name was Eliza. She was an ayurvedic pulse reader. When I first saw her she was taking her friends pulse and saying things like, "yeah, I can see that clearing up for you," and "you're feeling way more open and creative." I asked her what she was doing and she said she'd show me. She took my left wrist and then started to rattle things off about me. I am allergic to sugar. If I have sugar it should only be fruit. I was feeling uneasy because I recently lost my job. I wasn't blown away by either of these revelations. It's common knowledge that sugar is terrible for you and in this economy it's pretty easy to guess that someone had recently lost a job. She and I talked about my sister a little bit and then she let go of my wrist. I asked her more about what she did and she would say that she just knew things, ever since she was little, and that we all had this capability but very few of use learn how to use it. She kept on saying, "You understand, you're an artist." But she never once asked me what I did for a living or even as a hobby. She said that when she was little she would cry all the time because she could feel the pain other's felt when their cats died. "It felt like cats where always dying," she said. "At that table over there," she nodded with her head, "someone's cat recently died. And there is a long triangle going on." Eliza can do it, I thought. She'll tell me what I'm supposed to do. So I dug out the card that she had given me and I put her number in my phone. I was nervous to call for some reason. I didn't want to do it when anyone was around. I didn't want anyone to know about it. I called four days after putting the number in my phone. She didn't answer and I left a message about how I'd met her in a bar and how I wanted another reading if possible. She called me back in less than five minutes. She'd moved to Hawaii. "Oh really, which island?" I asked. People who know Hawaii always ask questions like this. I was going to tell her that my sister, the one she said had chronic fatigue syndrome, had lived on Maui for eight short months. I didn't though. I just said good luck and she told me I was sweet for remembering her and to go to the place where she worked and to talk to Joan if I felt like I needed guidance. Guidance is exactly what I need, but it feels even stranger to go get a pulse reading from a stranger. But really that is what Eliza was--a stranger to me. So I'm back to square one. Should I go to grad school or not, with the added question--should I go to an ayurvedic pulse reader to tell me if I should go to grad school or not?