I have a new personal statement for the Universal application...
------------
I was born without roots, destined to wander. My world fell into this pattern from the moment I was born, and I have been constantly on the move since.
I joined this world in San Diego, but my parents divorced a few months later so I was shifted to San Antonio to live with my grandmother. When my mother remarried, it was to a non-commissioned officer in the Air Force. He adopted me so I left my birth name behind, and as we changed abode every couple of years -- Reno, London, Kansas City, El Paso, Grand Forks -- I grew comfortable with having friends and living quarters for a short time. But it was in my sophomore year of high school, in Honolulu, that I finally understood it was my destiny never to be settled.
We were slated to live there for 3 years, not returning stateside till I was 18 years of age. I wanted to make the trip back on a boat, but my mother and step-father laughed at the very idea and refused to even consider it. So I decided to go on my own. I got my social security number and started looking for a job to begin saving for the passage.
There were two problems with this plan -- 1. I was 15 and 2. I looked like I was 12. I talked my way into a afternoon position at a newsstand in the center city, not far from my high school, and started towards my goal...but Honolulu proved too expensive to live in, so at the end of the school year my mother, brothers and sister and I left my step-father to himself and returned to the mainland to settle in San Antonio.
Only I did not settle. I could not. I had grown too used to a new school every year or two. Temporary friends. Different worlds. No connections allowed. I built a career as an artist. Changed to working in a bookshop. I went to two different colleges to get a degree in film; two different colleges for my master’s in screenwriting...which I never finished. I moved apartments and got new cars, soon as they became too familiar. Moved to New York, Austin, Houston and LA, where I continued to change apartments in search of something fresh and new. Worked in more bookstores. Worked in film. Wrote screenplays. Did storyboards. My wanderlust was incapable of being satiated.
I even refused to be encumbered by relationships. Being a gay man, there were easy ways to find pleasure without commitment...until AIDs hit and I found myself an inadvertent celibate. Then I slowly began to realize that what I was doing was hiding, deflecting, refusing to be a part of the world, keeping myself as naught but an observer.
That is when I began pouring my wishes and hopes and dreams into my writing, building characters like...well, like a 10 year-old boy who’s sabotaging the sale of his parents’ home so they can’t move, and a book cataloguer who’s hidden himself away from the world because of a family tragedy, and a fighter pilot seeking a reason to settle down, and an artist desperate for a commitment after nearly losing everything when his lover died, and an actor on the cusp of superstardom who treats his ex-wife and child like a scheduling issue. All of these characters seek something I know I will never have -- a place to belong to...someone to be part of. When I lived in LA, I almost achieved that.
Almost.
I now write books and live in Buffalo (NY) handling yet another kind of job -- packing libraries and archives. I travel a great deal, which let me settle into one apartment for eight years, longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere. I'm not here long enough for it to grow too familiar. The wanderlust is held at bay because I’ve worked in places I’d never have gone to on my own -- Salt Lake City, Boise, Lisbon, Munich, Hong Kong, Milwaukee, Key West, Albuquerque, Denver, Birmingham, York, Burlington, Salisbury, Portland, Bangor. My current career has returned me to London on many occasions, and Dublin, Derry, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, New Haven, Boston. I almost feel settled here.
Almost.
But I still remain without roots...and my destiny is set in stone -- my life will continue to inform my work and my work will reflect my life.
I would not...cannot have it any other way.
------------
I was born without roots, destined to wander. My world fell into this pattern from the moment I was born, and I have been constantly on the move since.
I joined this world in San Diego, but my parents divorced a few months later so I was shifted to San Antonio to live with my grandmother. When my mother remarried, it was to a non-commissioned officer in the Air Force. He adopted me so I left my birth name behind, and as we changed abode every couple of years -- Reno, London, Kansas City, El Paso, Grand Forks -- I grew comfortable with having friends and living quarters for a short time. But it was in my sophomore year of high school, in Honolulu, that I finally understood it was my destiny never to be settled.
We were slated to live there for 3 years, not returning stateside till I was 18 years of age. I wanted to make the trip back on a boat, but my mother and step-father laughed at the very idea and refused to even consider it. So I decided to go on my own. I got my social security number and started looking for a job to begin saving for the passage.
There were two problems with this plan -- 1. I was 15 and 2. I looked like I was 12. I talked my way into a afternoon position at a newsstand in the center city, not far from my high school, and started towards my goal...but Honolulu proved too expensive to live in, so at the end of the school year my mother, brothers and sister and I left my step-father to himself and returned to the mainland to settle in San Antonio.
Only I did not settle. I could not. I had grown too used to a new school every year or two. Temporary friends. Different worlds. No connections allowed. I built a career as an artist. Changed to working in a bookshop. I went to two different colleges to get a degree in film; two different colleges for my master’s in screenwriting...which I never finished. I moved apartments and got new cars, soon as they became too familiar. Moved to New York, Austin, Houston and LA, where I continued to change apartments in search of something fresh and new. Worked in more bookstores. Worked in film. Wrote screenplays. Did storyboards. My wanderlust was incapable of being satiated.
I even refused to be encumbered by relationships. Being a gay man, there were easy ways to find pleasure without commitment...until AIDs hit and I found myself an inadvertent celibate. Then I slowly began to realize that what I was doing was hiding, deflecting, refusing to be a part of the world, keeping myself as naught but an observer.
That is when I began pouring my wishes and hopes and dreams into my writing, building characters like...well, like a 10 year-old boy who’s sabotaging the sale of his parents’ home so they can’t move, and a book cataloguer who’s hidden himself away from the world because of a family tragedy, and a fighter pilot seeking a reason to settle down, and an artist desperate for a commitment after nearly losing everything when his lover died, and an actor on the cusp of superstardom who treats his ex-wife and child like a scheduling issue. All of these characters seek something I know I will never have -- a place to belong to...someone to be part of. When I lived in LA, I almost achieved that.
Almost.
I now write books and live in Buffalo (NY) handling yet another kind of job -- packing libraries and archives. I travel a great deal, which let me settle into one apartment for eight years, longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere. I'm not here long enough for it to grow too familiar. The wanderlust is held at bay because I’ve worked in places I’d never have gone to on my own -- Salt Lake City, Boise, Lisbon, Munich, Hong Kong, Milwaukee, Key West, Albuquerque, Denver, Birmingham, York, Burlington, Salisbury, Portland, Bangor. My current career has returned me to London on many occasions, and Dublin, Derry, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, New Haven, Boston. I almost feel settled here.
Almost.
But I still remain without roots...and my destiny is set in stone -- my life will continue to inform my work and my work will reflect my life.
I would not...cannot have it any other way.
No comments:
Post a Comment