How I Wish You Could See Me When I'm Flying In My Dreams

I may have a job (internship, really) in NYC this summer!

Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
New York, NY 10012
http://www.jenbekman.com/

I got this email from the Gallery Manager, Lindsey Wolkowicz:

--
Peter,

Hi and thanks for your interest in an internship with Jen Bekman Gallery.

I have been reviewing resumes all week and yours definitely stands out. I would love to have the chance to meet with you and discuss the internship further. When would you actually be available to meet/ when are you next in NYC? I am ideally looking to fill positions now and will most likely need to bring a few other people on when summer hits so if your planned arrival in NY is not for a while I would encourage you to be in touch with me as that date draws closer and we can work it out.

I am glad that you enjoy the gallery and look forward to meeting you. Please feel free to call or email me at any time.

Thanks again!
Best,

Lindsey
--

This is a really, really important break for me. I've been sending out applications, resumes, and cover letters left and right for the past two months. I haven't heard back from most places, except the big museums to tell me that their internship programs were filled in December... oops!

This all escalated into a really awful conversation with my parents on Tuesday morning. I got up super early because I had not been able to sleep, and so at 7:30 AM I struck out to Bloom to pick up some more green tea, peanut butter and toilet paper. I thought it would be good to check in with my parents early in the day, so that I wouldn't have to call them later when I was busy. We started talking about this summer, and the conversation quickly took a turn for the worse. And when I say worse, I mean awful. Wild accusations were sent flying at each other, hurtful things were said, and generally we were so anti-productive, except in the arena of emotional destructive behavior. I spent an hour in Bloom, walking up and down the aisles, and finally stopping in the soup aisle, where I spent the last half-hour on the phone with my Mom, trying to fight back having a meltdown and also trying to remain cogent.

I finally ended the conversation, paid for my staple items (so innocent in the wake of the argument), and then promptly got in my car and cried for 10 minutes. It's been a really long time since I last cried. I didn't cry when my dog Roxi died two weeks ago. I didn't cry when I found out that Grant Simmons, an older man from the Adirondacks and friend of my grandparents with whom I'd built quite the friendship over games of backgammon, watching Wimbledon, going canoeing, or telling stories around big fires on summer nights, died a few weeks ago. I also didn't break down on the anniversary of Cristin Duprey's-- a classmate from St. Andrew's-- untimely death in February. There have been so many moments where I have had sufficient reason to emote, but I don't. Or rather, I didn't, although both work in an understanding of the emotional disconnect happening there.

It always really freaks me out when I cry, because it's so seldom. It usually means that I'm at the end of my rope, in some way. It has only come when I'm in major periods of transition, or deep deep bouts of the blues (July 2007, anyone?). Therefore, crying in my car, in the parking lot of Bloom, was really out of place. I'm in a better-than-usual spot right now, which is great because it's in turn making me re-evaluate what I mean when I say "usual" in that construction. Things with Tom are going-- a little shaky, but I'm starting to believe that's just going to be the nature of the beast-- the weather is beautiful, I've been doing lots of yoga, my honors thesis proposal is finished its first stage of formulation, I've had an amazing time with my friends recently, and last weekend was one of the best weekends I've had this year. Why, then, was I crying, almost uncontrollably, in my car at 8:45 AM?

I think it really comes to a mass of issues that are tied to my position at this school. I never planned to come to W&M, except that near the time when I was having to make my college decisions they offered me an incredibly generous scholarship that quickly turned my focus from Penn and Middlebury, and I decided to give it a shot, knowing that if not I could easily transfer back up North. In a way, I made the decision based not on what I felt about the school, but what I had gleaned from a few key conversations with professors (Anne Rasmussen, George Greenia, Tamara Sonn and Talbot Taylor), a walk through of the campus on my own, a tour, and 24 hours spent in Williamsburg. It all happened so quickly, and I very soon afterwards regretted my decision to choose scholarship over where I really wanted to go. Even so, I thought that if I completed a first year at W&M within the scholarship program that I could hopefully transfer wherever I wanted or needed to the following year.

W&M is a 5.5 hour drive from my house. I'm one of the out-of-state students, which means that I'm of the 33% that aren't from VA. If you then think about that demographic, you have to include ALL of the international and national students, so I am quickly reduced, numerically, to a very small percentage of students from my general geographic area, background, education range, etc. I've met about 10 students who attended boarding school at W&M. I met that many students when I went on the tour at Middlebury. I'm not saying it's a bad thing-- actually, it's probably even better, really-- but it's just that W&M was a huge shake-up of everything that I had expected. No one really cared about Pennsylvania, St. Andrew's, or really most of those defining characteristics in my biography. But quite frankly, I don't blame them. So many of them had friends coming into school that it was hard to figure out where I fit in. But, as Bob Dylan said, and which is so often quoted it's gone beyond cliche: "You just gotta keep on keepin on." I've finally reached a space where I feel like I belong here, and that I'm proud of being here.

But the thing is, W&M is far enough away that my parents only come down once a year. Usually it's for a quick visit-- maybe 36 hours at most. It's tough for me, in a way that I never really understood until Tuesday morning. I rely on them for so much-- I am so in awe of their place in life-- how they've built this life up from the ground up. They're probably my main source of inspiration-- they've taught me so much on how to be socially integrated, morally minded, and kind, and really what I want is to be as good of a person when I'm older as my parents are now. But, because of this, it's really hard for me when I don't get to see them that often. Sure, I went to boarding school, which began the whole trend at the age of 14, but then they could come down for soccer games, crew races, musicals, and singing events, because I was only an hour away. Here, they miss out on basically all of my a cappella concerts, every single play I was in, and the day-to-day activities that make this place so special for me. I'm having to confront being away from them in a way that is much different than I had expected. Because I've been living away from home since I was 14, I assumed that I had already made the transition away from the nest-- that I didn't need the physical presence of my parents much anymore. But the more these three years at W&M have worn on, the more I realize how much energy I derive from their presence-- how I really wish, above anyone else in the world, that they could see me do what I'm doing here. Unfortunately, they also both work full-time, so it's hard to even get them on the same page with what I'm doing academically. They really try, but contemporary art is so separate from their spheres that it's very difficult to reach a middle ground. They both tried to read my 45 page final paper for W&M in DC last year on the avant-garde at the Hirshhorn, and they got through 3 pages and then put it down for good. It's tough, because at least if I could only share one thing, it would be the academics.

I've also targeted something which reaches further back than all of these more immediate issues. When I was in middle school, my sister went through really intensive changes in schooling methods, tutoring, and diagnostic testing for her difference in learning style. While I never felt consciously it was hard on me, I really feel like I pushed the thought so far from my presence of mind that it just seemed to be a non-issue. But I started doing all of my projects on my own-- spending hours upon hours in my room, completing posters on American History, reading Jack London, or teaching myself algebra, all the while interspersed with hours of Lego building. I began to rely almost entirely on my own capacity for learning and success, so that when I did well on a test or paper I no longer felt the need to show it to anyone. That was MY creation-- I wasn't offered any help, proofreading, or anything-- I had myself to blame, or reward, for my own doing.

The thing I feel pretty fortunate about is that I haven't really failed that much. I've always loved school and really spent a huge amount of time developing a perfectionist paradigm that I've found to be very helpful. I think, though, that it really comes from those hours in my room, deciding that I had to execute everything perfectly, or else I would have to be wholly held accountable. So, from then on, I worked harder than I ever had, and I got into St. Andrew's School in Middletown, DE. From there, I pushed myself in classes, got on the honors track, and began making my own academic decisions, in terms of choosing the science track over history, music theory over visual arts, and psychology over ethics. I started to feel really proud of my work. I was recognized a few times during high school in very public ways for my academic and social achievements at school, and while my parents were there for the ceremonies, I had this internal sense of wholeness. I began to derive a sense of completeness from academic success. Therefore, when I was nominated for the W&M scholarship and got it, it just felt like reciprocation for how hard I'd worked in school.

Academics have always come naturally to me. It's actually become a weird point of contention in some social situations, because I've found it just to be easier to be totally silent about them. I really dont' like to bring up a lot of my own successes publicly, because I've cultivated a hyper-modesty with so many things, because of my own past issues with success (as if I revealed that yes, I did do well, that it would be evanescent and I would lose ability), body image, sports, and family, so that I often find it easier just to not talk about myself. I went through most of freshman year never mentioning the Murray Scholarship, so when I had to go to functions with dignitaries, President Nichol, W&M deans, etc. I made up alternative stories of where I was going, or I was just very evasive. I felt like I almost had to hide the fact that I'd been chosen to be a Murray Scholar. Only recently have I really began to embrace the whole thing, and I think it comes from an opening up of my own self to my flaws. Over the past year I've been very conscious to expose my flaws to myself, speak openly to them, and then reconcile. It's been really good for me in terms of how I interact with people now-- I feel like a much more full, complete and invigorated person. I still have tons of skeletons and things that will trip me up, but overall I've really started to win many of the battles against them.

Anyway, I'm rambling now, but basically on Tuesday morning I realized that I just miss my parents desperately. And the fact that I had so completely attacked them on basis of their word, character, and role as parents hurt me more than I could have imagined. I was hurt by their lack of interest with my life here-- how they never visit, don't show any interest in my romantic relationships (until I bring it up, and then they're totally there with me), ask me about my academics, or do the things that so many of my friends' parents do here. I've really felt like an island at W&M for so long, but I'm beginning to feel so much more connected (for all the reasons I've listed before). And it was because of that that I collected myself after a good 10 minutes of hard, hard crying, and drove myself home, took a shower, made some green tea and oatmeal, and spent the next four hours applying for new jobs in NYC. I just had to keep trucking. I had to do what I knew how to do. As Dan said to me the other day-- this is my "Make it Work" moment. I have so much to offer and look forward to, that I need to move on. And again, as Dan has reminded me, each day things in the past get a little easier. So, I just need to sleep on things, be more patient, and embrace the schisms in my life's rhythms.

OK... phew. That was a lot more intense than I had been planning. But YES-- I may have a job at this gallery in NYC this summer. And I've gotten accepted into the 3 week Sotheby's Institute program on Contemporary Art in NYC for the month of June. Things are coming together, and my honors thesis proposal is in the process, and I'm looking upwards. This email this morning has re-energized me.

I can only thank my friends who have pushed me, sometimes more harshly than I would have thought necessary at the time (but in retrospect have been totally on target), to keep on reaching higher. I have the incredible gift of an amazing support system-- people who are so wholly genuine and full of compassion, kindness, and and beauty. I really could not have gotten through this week without them. So, thank you-- you all know who you are. And I only hope that in moments of these in your lives that you'll feel free to call on me.