Transported

Here I am, dear readers, at Goucher College for the first residency of my MFA program. We eat and breathe writing. I am making new friends right and left, being mentored by talented and committed journalists, essayists, and storytellers. I'm exhilarated, sometimes tired, and almost always glad I'm doing this.

One exercise we had to do yesterday was to find snippets of dialogue, which we will combine for a group reading near the end of next week. Here is my small contribution, from a conversation I was party to last night at dinner:

Woman: So what do you do?
Man: I’m in insurance.
Woman: Oooh! I used to be on the insurance law beat! I love insurance!
Man: (pause) Are you okay?

Here is a quote I found in today's workshop materials that made me think, "YES!":

The divide is not between the servants and the served, betwen the leisured and the workers, but between those who are interested in the world and its multiplicity of forms and forces, and those who merely subsist, worrying or yawning . . . . The world is full of light and life, and the true crime is not to be interested in it.

from Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice, by A. S. Byatt

While I'm writing snippets, here is an email from Will I got today:

i love a lot and
i mean it we
love you
mommy come back in 2 weeks
yeah and i mean it 123

This is what my time here is like, collecting treasures small and large. I'll try to share more with you as I go.