I was so excited about being paid to write something haunting and literary, as opposed to the payments I’ve received in the past to write cheerful promotional material, that I totally choked on what to do with the check. As reflected in my last blog, I was elated and considered all the usual tactics: frame it? Nah, it’s not that pretty. Besides, it’s cash. I want the money to begin to justify all the workshops, books, grad school, and bags of potato chips it cost me to write this essay.
I copied it. Not good enough. I scanned it (above), better — but still. I thought about depositing it. Then — idea!! — cash it at the bank and ask for 100 one-dollar bills. That will expand its heft and longevity. I will know I’ve earned substantial payment. My purse will bulge, my wallet burst.
It was a cold and rainy day when I tore the check from its voucher and placed it in my purse, then my pocket then my purse again. I did some errands. I didn’t venture to the bank.
I took the check out of my purse and decided to enjoy it a bit longer, to ruminate on the possible uses of this check. I immediately found the perfect temporary use — a bookmark! I placed the check in my author’s copy of Arts & Letters, after a Donald Hall poem, then moved it along as I read my way through the entire issue. I returned to reading A Woman’s Education by Jill Kerr Conway, and used the hallowed check to mark my place there. I have been reading a lot of poetry books — April Ossman’s Anxious Music, Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno’s Slamming Open the Door, Dana Roesser’s In the Truth Room — compelling reads. Could the check be inside one of them? I’ve looked, no luck.
I have turned my house upside down. I have flipped through all my recently read books. The check has disappeared. Could I have returned the check to the library? I had borrowed Jill Kerr Conway books (five of them! I met her in February and wanted to bone up) from Rutgers, and I’d returned them on that dreary day I decided against the bank. It was March 10th.
I called Robeson Library. The pleasant, helpful reference librarians have been alerted to the possibility that an Arts & Letters check may be lurking in one of the five books, now dispersed to their respective shelves — in the Douglas Library, mostly. Women’s Studies. Women’s work. Women’s pay. Oh, the irony.
I could go on. Last June I conducted a writing workshop at St. Mary’s by the Sea, Cape May Point. Of course, it was unpaid. But Sisters suggested that we bring our books and art to sell, which I did (at my own cost– I bought a bunch of copies of Keeping Time). I loved leading the workshop, and by all accounts, the workshoppers loved it, too. I spent the last afternoon selling books and cards, of which 30 percent was to be a donation to the Sisters of St. Joseph, and I was to receive a check for 70 percent of my sales. That would be about $275. I waited eight weeks. Nine weeks, all summer. The check never came. I emailed a polite query. Apologies. Promises. Waiting. Nothing. Now it’s winter, I give up and ask for a tax letter acknowledging my donation since payment is not possible. Yesterday I received an apology and a check from the nun who coordinated the event — drawn on her personal account. Yikes. Talk about guilt. How can I cash this check? I suppose I should just scan it and blog about it.
Oy. We’re working on our obsessions in Chris Bursk’s poetry workshop. Maybe getting paid is mine. Just maybe.
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