Aspire to Inspire

Dear Chelsea:

On behalf of our entire community, congratulations once again on your acceptance to the Program in Writing at CalArts! We had a large and exceptionally talented applicant pool this year, so you have already distinguished yourself as a promising artist. I salute you and look forward to welcoming you personally. If you have not already received your decision letter, it should arrive in the next few days...

So put your East Coast winter behind you and join us.

No time to express what is deserved. Today I received this and a week ago my acceptance from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. So many sensations I want to write out (my way of seeing what I know, giving nerves a language). Over this last week, I feel reborn, revitalized. I am learning each moment. I am paying attention. I am listening. I am discovering what I felt I forgot: who I am. Today I am setting off to Bimini; a trip I never thought I'd take, a trip I was always too self-conscious, too controlling to go on. Now I am proud of myself, I must say, for acknowledging the need for a challenge, to excel within elements of the unknown, to be surprised. From the page to experience, one must be fearless to succeed and one must have confidence in order to become anything meaningful, someone more. Ultimately, risking the unspoken - displaying the self's secret spaces - was embraced and a staff accepts me for the stories that are mine and a character I haven't always felt proud of, an I who becomes something solid by voicing the imperfect mind. I knew my disorder made me who I am and now, by never denying it, I have the chance to make the superficial, the repetitions, the torment meaningful once and for all.

PS: LOADS OF PHOTOGRAPHS SOON.

Cezanne's Doubt from Joel Tomar Levin on Vimeo.
By Joel Tomar Levin - a beautiful mind. He filmed this in Paris and I was lucky enough to be the other face. 

I wouldn't be surprised if our letters were bound. The man knows how to communicate.