on the rejected

I don't know about you guys, but I seem to spend a lot of time applying for things (which you may have noticed due to unsubtle comments while keeping details hush hush).

Some clarity then. Most recently I have been applying for a variety of things. The list goes like this:

- An MFA in San Francisco (which I have been accepted onto - potentially super exciting)

- Funding for the MFA in San Francisco. An ongoing source of frustration and waiting.

- Writing jobs. Always writing jobs.

- Illustration jobs. Always illustration jobs.

- poetry stuff. Varied and occasional.

- Short story competitions and journals. Sometimes fruitful, more often than not, frustrating again. Frustration is a feeling that may come to embody my generation. Certainly my mid twenties.

Often, things get rejected and I lose confidence with them, thinking, 'Well, I suppose I was wrong then, I suppose this was a pile of wank,' and it dies a slow death hidden on my hard drive. Although often I put them here. This post is an example of that. The Rejections (kind of like The Corrections, only less well selling - still reading that mother fucker by the way. The well-trod conundrum - How do busy people in The Modern Age have enough time to read 600 page novels?) That is what this post is about. The Rejected Art. The Rejected Writing. I'm not sure the poem's any good, but that's not really the point. Often you have to wade through an ocean of crap to get to the tower of awesomeness. Or something. Let's call them 'Experiments.'

Below we have a poem and some illustrations of animals made of other animals I did for a children's workshop proposal. Enjoy both. It's either that or the hard drive imprisonment for them both.

Read this poem imagining you are half asleep and have just had a I'm-worried-about-my-life chat with a friend.

UNTITLED

I can't decide where the reality lies

If it's meaning can be found in work

In thought

Or feeling

In the sensation of just being alive

Where is the reality

What possesses authenticity

- Drive?

What moves the world

Other than time

I asked this question to the moon

But he didn't answer back

I wrote it in the words I said to a friend

- As she lay in her bed

In her head

Her eyes

The worries of tomorrow

We don't have the answers

What can any of us do but ask

Pep talk ourselves to interviews

Pay rent through the confusion of a poor loud suburb

And stare into the sky -

The horizon is, after all,

An imaginary line that recedes as you walk towards it

I dunno about that one.

Now to the animals:

Dogbird

Elephrog

Noisy Cow

Noisy Cow (anatomical breakdown)