dudemanflab's Diaryland
Diary
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a recent letter. What do you think?
Dear Mr. Van Anglen,
Greetings. My name is Paul Bindel. I applied to the M.A. program at B.U. with intentions to study literature and the environment, so I reasoned it would be best to extend a line of communication to you.
I'm not sure how to begin this letter because I just sent one like it to another professor. I finished relating stories of my hunting experience with my father ("three-way cross-species communication" I intoned), only to discover she received an award for her environmental activism and protesting. In fact, I am somewhat unsure of how to address potential graduate professors. I am a satellite, orbiting a globe of academic activity from my outpost in New Mexico. I have no publications, no teaching experience to speak of, and out of nowhere, I am beaming to your desk, your personal computer, your eyes.
What to tell you? What would you like to know? The Environment and I have had a long-standing affair since my days of youthful protest. (I will say she prefers another name in private company, though how can I speak it to anyone but her?) While other children tossed their lollipops on the ground only to giggle and squeal as they crushed the detatchment of ants gobbling the new-found food, I plead the moral highground.
"Stop!" I said, "It isn't right. Not at all! What did they do to you?"
They laughed at me. "Would you rather ants chew on your head?" said Jesse, a friend at most other times.
"No, of course not. But they aren't chewing anyone's head. They're eating sugar."
"Alright, ant-friend. You just wait. Tonight they'll find your head covered in sugar and then whose side will you be on? Ants or humans?"
I was bewildered in the face of this predicament. How could I stand against a whole colony? But now I sit before a screen, much like the one you face, to tell you the children, like their parents, the adult world, etcetera, did not put actions behind their words. I survived the night, the week, the years to this day.
Can't you see how the Environment is important to me? I collected cards with pictures of animals on them. My grandfather subscribed me to World Magazine, National Geographic's youth version, and every other issue came with six endagered animal cards. I will tell you I cared for mine. I folded the perforations so carefully and ripped them with utter delicacy and read all the species facts and even drew larger pictures of the full body diagrams on the back. My bottlenose dolphin beat my orangutang for realism, but every animal had its shot.
Speaking of shots. I withheld mine for years. Never would I go with my father hunting deer, quail, or pheasant.In a town where masculinity is measured by truck size, the antler points of the buck in the truckbed could earn you something as well. "My brave hunter." cooed the women, "My brave little man." Not for me, at least for all my youth. Do you think I didn't love my father or that I resented the hours he worked away from home? Of course I loved him, but how could I go hunting when I had watched Bambi or read novels with animal protagonists?
You ask about my letter to the other professor? Yes, I'll admit it, I used a firestick this year, and just after reading Stafford's poem "animals full of light / walk through the forest / toward someone aiming a gun / loaded with darkness." I don't know if you've ever seen Western Kansas, but it is the furthest thing from a forest. Flat except the corners of a square field that has been cultivated in a circle. We trekked through head-high weeds and grass--thistles and bristles, sticks, thorns, brush. All for forty male pheasants. Do I regret it? My friend Cindy regrets nothing, but how can I pretend to not have made mistakes? Why should regret have as much volume as that other word... that love? Yes, I loved the birds. I loved them as they broke into the sky with a flutter of wings and a garbled cry and BANG when my dad brought them down I smiled. For I loved him too. And there was little else that made him come so alive. So as I stalked through fields, twelve-gauge in hand, I also negotiated two loves--the humanly, that which has kept me warm and fed and with a bed, and the beastly, that which thrills me in its difference, its world-understanding through non-human eyes.
Why do you need all this information? Why have I not spent more time describing my education? My intellectual interests? Well this is an introductory letter, Mr. Van Anglen. You can't expect me to lay it all out on the first try. What exactly brought you to study literature and the environment, and to attend--which little schools?--Princeton Cambridge Harvard University? Hmm... I'll give you this-- you know how to sell yourself. Please understand this is one of my first letters. I am only learning how to properly dialogue with potential graduate professors. I wish you the best today. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Paul
2:27 p.m. - January 12, 2008
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