November 1 and All Is Okay-ish

It's November first and I have committed to writing a ridiculous number of words. Why, you didn't ask?

I have no idea. I think I miss writing.

Here's what I do know. Sort of.

It's transition time. It is mid-autumn. Halloween is over. Thanksgiving and Christmas are on the horizon. The days are getting shorter. The time is going to change. Mornings will be brighter, but night will fall so much earlier.

This is Davey's time. He loves the shortening days, the lengthening nights. He could easily live without the sun. If I could ever get him to get a DNA test, we'd probably learn he's got a bit of the Land of the Midnight Sun in those genes. Even when the sun is out, he's holed up in his cave with the shades closed and maybe, just maybe one lamp glowing. He's a vampire without the fangs and cool clothes. Can a DNA test pick up a vampire gene?

Meanwhile, I'm scurrying around, trying to convince myself this is all fine, I can handle the short days. I crave the serenity of the long evenings where I want to be in bed by 8pm and there are enough candles to keep a semblance of hygge if I embrace it. 

Is it okay to drink decaf loaded with milk and sugar at 6pm? Is it time for me to finally conquer that rommegrot recipe? If I'm going all in with the hygge, I'm indulging in the sweets, I tell you what.

Halloween has been stowed away for another year. Goodbye spiders crawling up the exterior wall, the giant web, the ghosts hanging from the front porch, and all those delightful vintage Beistle cutouts. You pumpkins, gourds and mums can stay. 

And yet it's too soon for Winter decor. I mean, I still have to tidy up the garden and put my tender plants under cover so I'm not ready for winter. And what is winter decor anyway?

Well, if you look at my Amazon cart (yes, I'm a big part of the supply chain and economic problems), it's some kind of mashup between Nordic and lazy. Pinecones, a Rookwood ceramic tree, a macrame thingy, and da-da-da- CANDLES. 

What was I saying? Oh, yes. Decor. Okay. Okay. It's not decor. It's slapdash, whatever my mood is, what I can afford with a few dear pieces thrown in. I keep telling myself that I should get rid of the thrift store finds, and antique store purchases that no longer speak to me. A lot of what I need to get rid of (read: donate) are a lot of those mismatched, no joy-giving Christmas decorations we've collected along the way.

I have a glass turkey. That'll hold me through December. The turkey has no choice.

I'm an arrow in a bow

I once found solace in writing. Even when I was penning my most ridiculous posts, I felt a sense of peace. Now writing is a source of discomfort. It's a reminder that what once fueled my words is gone-ish and how things have changed and how the very act of writing itself has become a source of mild conflict and shame.

Life is so different now. The people (Mathman and the children) and cats, I once relied upon for material aren't part of my daily life. Being a mostly solitary creature leaves me with little to write about. I'm so bored with myself I can't stir up enough mental dust to pound the keys.

Hang on a minute. That's a lie. A dirty, rotten lie.

The truth is life is ridiculously interesting and churning these days. So why am I not writing?

For one thing, I'm out of the habit. Recognizing that precious few people really give a fig about the minutia of my life, I still miss the habit of sitting down every day and trying to find something meaningful or funny to write about. I am so out of the habit that I finished the previous sentence with a preposition.

The second reason is because the cast of characters has changed and some of them are strongly opposed to being part of this blog. I can't say I blame them. We can all agree that I use my writing as a weapon from time to time.

The third reason is that more people who know me outside of writing come here now. The anonymity I once felt has disappeared, and I find myself quite reluctant to go out on the limbs from whence I once swung. (Look ma! No sentence-ending preposition!)

Here are my options as I see them:

1.Write anonymously and express myself however I want about whatever I want.
2. Write the way I always have and hope that the new characters get used to being captured here like moths on a straight pins.
3. Learn how to be more creative and stop drawing so much from life and spend more time writing fiction.

That last one, while appealing, isn't really possible. Blogging has always been, for me, a sort of journal keeping. I'm not sure I want to abandon that kind of writing.

I'm leaning toward writing anonymously so that I can do what I need to do with my writing. I've always used it as cheap therapy and goodness knows I could use much more of that now. (See above about the churning.)

Actually, there is a fourth option. I can continue to draw from life and write in a way that is both creative and at least somewhat sensitive to the people in my life. This sounds good, too, but it will lead to so much more not writing so no.

I'm going to write anonymously for a while. It's what I need because life is about to change again and I'm going to be even more solitary than I was before. There will be days when writing is the only contact I have with the outside world. Not that that is an all around bad thing.

If you want to find me, please email me at lisahgolden@gmail.com and I will send you the link to the new place where I'll be writing.

I'm also going to keep this blog and may post here, too, but for now, let's pretend we don't now each other, shall we?

Thanks to all of you who have been here to read and to share in the goofiness. You're all gems.

Here's to new old things.

 xoxo

Lisa

Sketch #1 - Birds

The women sat at a tall table observing their friend as she cleared empty Bud Light bottles and PBR cans. Her sheer white top showed off her tan and rode up just a little as she bent to pick up a piece of plastic cigarette wrapper that had escaped some patron's hand. She straightened and approached a table of men.

Her friends quietly sipped their cocktails, lifted their cigarettes to their lips. The scene a distraction from the conversation about a grandchild's tee ball game or work or a trip south. The Reds winning 9 to 1 deserving just the passing glance at the screen. Significant others sat at the bar, moved about the space, giving off just enough gravitational pull to keep one aware, requiring no more than an occasional glance or a smile I see you. You see me. We are.

The men at the table are dressed for golf. Men of a certain age with the tops of their cheeks sun-kissed, their eyes a slightly red-rimmed from a day of laughter, concentration and drink. The entire table went on alert as the attractive blond reached them.

Her friends watched as each man leaned in closer. See the male of the species demonstrate interest with the elongation of the neck, a dilation of the pupils.

Across the room, her best friend drew on her Salem Light. Blew the smoke out slowly. It didn't matter that the other women at the table had moved on to other conversations, other observations. When she spoke they saw it, too. And laughed.

Indicating with her cigarette their friend who was in the middle of a gorgeous, head thrown back laugh and the table of men, all long-necked and open-mouthed, she said, "Look at them. Like baby birds hoping to be fed."


Inspired by K.

So it's one more round for experience

The change of seasons has me all stirred up. I'm the alarm that won't stop going off. The lighter that won't catch and burn. That ache in your shoulder that's not quite enough to send you running for the pills, but enough to make you moan "fuck" when you move a certain way.

My old therapy aka writing eludes me. Hateful muse.

I miss writing but can't latch on to a thought long enough or securely enough to mine it for anything meaningful or even funny.  Dig deeper?  Bite me. If I don't will most of my thoughts to glance off me like baby taps, I'd morph into a glowing ball of fury.

And as fun as that sounds to the casual observer?  No.

My new nickname is already The Door Slammer.

Even so, I'm going to show up here and get my chops back. I cannot keep not writing and expect anything to change, right? Come on. Convince me. Or don't bother because I am pretty hard headed.  In my hands, stubborn becomes a whole new weapon.

XO

While we wait for some balls to drop

I'm thinking in cliches.

Long time, no blog.  Tap, tap.  Is this thing on? Someone please break my fingers already.

Here I am on the last day of what has been a very strange year, glad to see it over and wishing I could go back and do so many things differently. I wouldn't be me if I didn't second guess myself.

Am I looking forward to the coming new year?  Yeah, I am. In an effort to be less like myself, I've made some resolutions. They're pedestrian and I'll likely fail at least half of them by 12:10 a.m., but like Homer Simpson says, trying is the first step to failing.

I'm on it.

One resolution is (don't be shocked) to start writing again. I've considered going anonymously so I can put it all out there, but I'm just too lazy to bother. Plus by the time I get set up to write with a new name and a new blog, it'll be 2015 and I won't have kept a single resolution, carbs or not.

And I don't think it will be a bad thing for me to have a wee self-imposed filter in place. At least for a while. After a couple of years of mind-altering pharmaceuticals, I'm afraid the emotions that have started springing out at me like my sister used to do when she knew damn well that I was terrified of monsters in the closet will come spilling out onto the screen and oh god.  That will not end well.

So I ask you to watch this space. There will be new characters and different settings. I'll fill in the gaps and try to wrap up some old plot lines. Not because I really think you care or have given it much thought, but because of that Joan Didion quote:  I don't know what I think until I write it down.

I promise you no twerking, no fiscal cliffs and no Duck Dynasty.  I cannot promise you that I won't dive head first into whatever scandals and viral goblins seize our collective imagination in the coming year. I mean, some days that may be all that stands between me and those menacing emotions.

 For now, I wish you a happy, healthy 2014. What do you plan to do differently?

A lot less bolder

"Now sweet sixteen's turned thirty-one, get to feeling weary when the work day's done...."

Those lyrics opened a short story I wrote in high school.

The story was about a woman who found her life so unbearable that she packed her bags, carefully placed them into the trunk of her car and drove away from her husband and children. At the conclusion of that story, the woman returned home before anyone had even noticed she'd left.

That story, along with several others,  now resides in a box, placed carefully in the trunk of my car on day a couple of months ago.  They remain there because I am not yet ready to unpack all the bits of my life I saw fit to carry with me when I left.

Turns out I wrote my own future in that wreck of short story. After a couple of attempts to live out those words written in the looping script of my eighteen year old self, I finally broke free of the gravitational pull of security and drove away.

My marriage, that once seemingly indestructible thing, finally gave way to the slow, steady erosion of time and dysfunction. Lovers of symmetry, we gave ourselves a final divorce hearing on our 25th wedding anniversary. Contrarians to the end, we had no use for the tradition of silver on that day. No, we went with paper and ink, signatures on the line.

Let it be Decreed and all that. Dissolved like sugar. The solution was dissolution.

The outlines of our lives

Life and its shifting dynamics are at work here. The writer in me went quiet and the navel-gazer in me let her because sometimes a good hushing up is just what I need to get straight. The inner turmoil that once fueled rapid keystrokes and even more rapid backspacing medicated into a sort of calm, I had an excuse for not looking too closely. At anything.

And then something stirred. Was it because I went down a dosage in my anti-depressants? Was it the reintroduction of Phentermine into the soup of my brain chemistry? Was it that suggestion of something new? How could it carry the mark of familiarity like a threadbare-at-the-elbows sweater, favorite pair of jeans, the worry stone in my pocket? It did. I'd heard that one before.

But that suggestion made something come loose, peeled back a layer. A corner of a layer. Just enough for a glimpse of a memory. It forced me to think, to remember, to take note even if I wasn't ready to write about it because that would put it down in black and white and the very grayness of it compelled me to delve more, to reveal something to myself.

Until the light was so bright it couldn't be ignored.

The telling part isn't coming easy so I turn to novels. Reading them, listening to them, thinking about them. But not writing them. Not even considering writing them. A consumer, not a producer. A taker, not a giver. A seeker of inspiration. Two or three at a time, barely pausing to take out the last CD from one audio book before inserting the first of a new one. Not time to digest an ending, just pushing on in a mad quest for words that help me show (not tell!) what's going on.

And there is much to tell, but I've lost my confidence to tell it. And then that nagging, glass half empty question - who gives a shit anyway? This life isn't the least bit interesting to anyone who isn't living it.

Cast your story out into the ocean. A message in a bottle would have just as much impact in the grand scheme of things, you silly woman with the tiny life who uses cliches like grand scheme of things.

And then I found myself feeling a little put out to read about the process of writing those novels, the writerly angst, the push and pull, the very extrusion of words onto paper, the utter fucking sausage making of it all.

I was becoming unmoored, cut loose and drifting from the anchor I'd gotten so used to that it felt like a part of me. The way I'd come to define myself, the community I'd been a part of were slipping away. Self-imposed exile how I love thee. Undefine myself, erase the box, delete, delete, delete.

Now what?

Work. Friends. The impossible commute. Family. The time warp that happens each spring as we race headlong and calendar-packed into the end of the school year. Baseball. Chloe's graduation. Friday lunches with friends and the laughter. How long had I gone without laughing, truly laughing, with friends?

It may have been a change that did me good. Out of my head and into life. Scary, of course, because it makes one vulnerable, but it's the bad with the good, right? Every good story needs both.

My observations turned outward because introspection was comfortably tucked away in a drawer somewhere. Tamped down through the miracle of modern medicine, safe distanced and secured.

I thought about the things I could write here.

The heron next to the pond I drive past every day on my way to work. The one day that another heron was there, too, dancing some sort of avian tango, long, narrow beaks pointed in opposite directions, wings outspread, parallel, slow movement to the right, up to the edge of the pond. I slowed down and watched for as long as I could.

Two tiny calves head-butting each other within a loose circle of other calves nursing on their mothers, a fog providing a backdrop, filtering the rising sun. That would have made a real keeper of a photo, but moments like that move too fast. Better to capture it in words. But I didn't. Not until now.

The lover, thinking that he's unobserved, burying his face in his lover's hair, breathing in her scent to hold with him until ----

The way a field of crimson clover looks like Georgia red clay when you view it at an angle. The way the world has suddenly greened up almost like it's been colorized by Hollywood.

The new stories, other people's stories, those nuggets of detail and even broad strokes, that you know you're already filing away for future reference, threads to be woven into the fabric of some story when you're ready to start writing again.

I think I'm ready.

Growth

My husband stopped sugarcoating his thoughts as they transformed into words. The problem is, he forget to tell me.

Last week, I drove along performing a soliloquy about how I didn't feel like writing because I don't write the way I once did. The honesty for which I was once praised, has gone from my writing. It's a common problem among people who draw material from their lives.

I hold back, worried about my job, our family. My relatives on Facebook. The cats. If I wrote the way I once did, who or what could be hurt? I'm hesitant to write about the kids because now that they're getting older, telling their stories seems like more of a violation of their privacy.

MathMan messed with his phone while I erected my tower of excuses and then, with a single sentence,  brought that tower of bullshit down.

So what you're telling me is that you've grown a conscience.

Ouch. Wow.

I processed that for a moment. (Process isn't a word I use all that much because I'm more react than reflect.) It felt like a blow. A physical blow.

And before I could stop them, tears fell.

That may be the meanest thing you've ever said to me.

A bit of perspective - if you stack that statement up next to all the mean things I've said to MathMan over the last twenty-five years, it's nothing. If you were to create a pie chart of ugly comments exchanged between the two of us, his statement wouldn't even make a big enough sliver to require a fork.

But when you stack it up against all the mean things he's ever actually said aloud to me? It doesn't leave much room in the pie for anything else.

He apologized. I didn't mean it that way. I just meant -----

Don't apologize. It's true. We both know it's true.

Sniff!

This marked the first time he'd ever mentioned that he thought my writing about the family and our relationship was out of line. I chewed over that revelation for the rest of the drive.

What? You didn't think I was going to quit the GIFs so soon, did you?

Far be for me to let go an opportunity to milk a good line. This martyr is all over it. A week later and I still haven't let it go.

Damn it, some cat puked on my conscience.

One sec, let me set my conscience aside so I can help you.

Do these earrings go with this conscience?

Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to grow a conscience?

I don't know if I can go. I have to wash my conscience that night.

Does this conscience make my butt look bigger?

You're standing on my conscience!

Now where did I leave my conscience?

Step aside! Lady with a conscience!

So what do you suppose is the standard gestational period for a conscience?

I may have been late to the conscience party, but don't let me slow you down.

A few more days of this and I'll reel it in. There's no point to taking that joke too far.

Of one thing you can be certain. If he doesn't kill me for being such an unconscionable bore and I do decide to write again, I won't be telling MathMan my pen name.

It feels more like an epiPHONY

For the last several months, writing has become something so difficult that I retreat instead of trying. Following my return to paid work, it's harder to keep up - with writing, reading, eating things that aren't scientifically engineered to make us grow a third nipple, exchanging a few words with my family, with everything. I spend in the neighborhood of twelve hours a day involved in work or getting to or from there so it's hardly a surprise that my online life has evolved. Devolved?

Even though I can't be online as much as I once was (that's what I get for finding a job without an office where I could fool around online without anyone seeing), doesn't mean I can't write. Right? Someone back me up here.

But where to start? I feel rusty, stiff, at a loss for subjects, voiceless. The  horror!

Enter the 3A.M. Epiphany - Uncommon Writing Exercises That Transform Your Fiction by Brian Kitely. This book was a gift from Kirie back when I had all the time in the world to do nothing but write and of course, genius that I am, set it aside for a day when I felt I could dedicate myself to improving my craft.

I believe delusional is the appropriate word here.

So. I'm using the exercises in this book to get the wheels turning. Let me tell you, those brain squirrels are out of shape. Tubby from excess, wheezing with the smallest exertions..

Hard cheese. I'm flogging those lazy, lardy crybabies, insisting they pump their fat little legs until I my fingers move across the keys and produce the 500 words or more required to complete each exercise in Professor Kitely's book.

In other words, I'm doing things differently and expecting different results. Better results? Maybe. The point is, I'm going to use my writing muscle until I can crack nuts with it. Which is more than I can say for most of my other muscles. Okaaaaay, all of my other muscles.

Kitely has a list of the exercises here. If you're interested in joining me in this exercise, please let me know. I'm only on Exercise 2 and will do Exercise 3 on January 4th since I chose to write this post on the third instead of doing my book work If enough people are interested, perhaps we could do this as a sort of online writing group. Not being a natural joiner, I'm hesitant to suggest this, but one of the writing resolutions I've made for this month is to be more active in a writing community. Bob help me. Change is hard.

What are you doing differently?

I could use one about now

I needed this today.

I have things to tell you, but for now I must settle for surreptitiously blogging for a sec during work. It's only Monday and I'm already wishing there was a vodka fountain in this office because even my happy pills aren't quite cutting through the madness.

But this is time sensitive so let's get to it! One of you may have a vacation depending on it.

Order Fifty Shades of Funny before midnight tonight (November 26th) and for every Amazon book order, of the softcover or Kindle, you are eligible for a free beach vacation that includes a week at the Cottages of Shipyard in Hilton Head, a four star resort, and 50,000 US Airways miles (typically good for 2 round-trip tickets in the United States).

The vacation week is August 31-September 7, 2013.

To enter, email your Amazon receipt to dcstanfa@fuse.net.  One random winner will be chosen.

Order the book or I'll send you a cat. A very badly behaved cat. No givebacks.

Sounds Like WILD

I finally finally read/listened to WILD by Cheryl Strayed.

Teri gave me the book back in April and I saved it, putting off reading it until I'd have real time to read and focus. This was going to be my inspiration for finally finally writing that creative non-fiction piece I've been dinking around with for a few years.

Waiting was ridiculous because I can neither focus nor pull free time out of my ass. You wanna do something? Do it.

Our library has the audio version. So perfect, I thought, because I could listen to it during my commute. I took along my hardback edition to read during my down time at the office (aka answering phones), in the car while I waited for Sophie to get out of swim team practice and whenever the spirit moved me. Which was often.

At first I was worried I wouldn't relate to the story. Stories involving the pain of losing a parent make me feel like a selfish asshole because my parents are still alive and well enough that I take them for granted even though I should know better. They're my mom and dad. They'll live forever.

We weren't what you'd call close-knit, but we get along fine. My brother and sister and me - our parents raised us with the fundamental idea that the purpose was for us to become productive, independent adults. And so we are.

The more I listened to Strayed's story, the less I fretted that we wouldn't connect. I wanted to hear how Cheryl made it from one end of the Pacific Coast Trail to the other alone. Alone! And she did all this without an iPod, an iPhone or an iPad. The 2012 mind reels.

What stayed with me was the fact that Cheryl Strayed didn't even know what she didn't know about taking on such a monumental hike and still she didn't let that stop her. During a few close scrapes, you see how ignorance may be dangerous, but it's also a great antidote to holding oneself back.

The overarching story of Cheryl's trek was one in which she got lost to found herself. I get that. I've been running from things, especially myself, for way too long.  Get me some boots that fit, a compass for morons and a tent that even a one-year-old could set up and I'd be willing to make a go of it.

When I finished the book, I wanted to email Cheryl (yes, I think of her by her first name) and beg her to turn around and hike back down the trail and to take me with her. With my life feeling rather frayed around the edges, I could use some direction. Maybe some hiking and electronic deprivation would do me some good.

I don't even care that I know jack about camping and I've never been on a proper hike. I've been training for this my whole life. My kids think I'm a pack-mule. While I was unemployed, it was nothing for me to go a few days without a shower. It was a smelly cake walk. Go weeks without shaving my legs, my pits, my toes? Bring it.  I could totally go for simplifying down to the essentials, packing it into something I can carry and disappearing into the wild like a short, bi-pedal hermit crab.

For now I'm roughing it at the Grand Hyatt Buckhead. The opposite of alone, I spent the day surrounded by excitable boys. Dinner was a Krispy Kreme milkshake at Flip Burger followed by a jaunt through the hospitality suite to grab an old fashioned. I haven't climbed a single stair because I'm wearing pumps and the elevator is so very close to the meeting rooms where I'm sitting all day taking minutes and having obnoxious IM chats with my boss. And as if that isn't grueling enough, I'm feeling a little put out that my amenities didn't get replenished.What? No fresh shampoo or lotion? No new shower cap? If I had The World's Loudest Whistle, you can bet I would have blown it this afternoon when I discovered the horror of no new toiletries.

This, my friends, is the kind of adversity that builds character. Okay, so maybe I'll have to title my memoir MILD.

I can live with that.

Shelved

You wrote.

To vent. To make sense. To find a way to explain how you could be so ridiculous? You wrote to process, to tell a story. Did that really happen?.

All those words written. Done and done. Purge, the purpose. A retching of poison, a letting of blood. Get back in that bed you made. Lie, lie, lie.

Shame and guilt, a foundation of sand. Drape them in indigo and call them humor. Self-defecating. No, that's not right.

Wasn't that story milked dry, emptied of energy anyway?

The words, left in the sun, faded on the printed pages.The files deleted - some on purpose. Others? It's not called a crash for nothing.

Tucked away now where it can't hurt you or anyone else.

Time passes. Words fade. Memories muddy. Sharp edges soften.

Then something happens. Something strange. Strange because you don't believe in signs unless they're convenient and fit your current internal narrative. Which compounds your cynicism and confirms your inability to believe. Faith is always just out of your reach. The mystical residing well beyond your pedestrian imagination.

It's just another day at the office. You're in the break room looking at the books on the swap shelves. Hoping to find something to hold your son's interest among the Harlan Cobens, Stephen Kings, Lisa Scottolinis, James Pattersons and Agathas.

You reach for a book. The Raft of the Medusa. It's a familiar title, but you don't know a thing about the story so you sit on the floor and read the dust jacket. Oh, right. It was a painting you studied in art history. By Gericault, the painter upon whose life the novel is based. You start to put the book back on the shelf. Not at all your son's type of story.

And that's when a book falls off the shelf and lands on the carpet next to you.

You look around. This is a joke, right? How is it possible that this book, this very book would be stuck among the thrillers and mysteries? But then, no one here knows that long-buried story. No one here would play that joke.

You think anew about the faded words on those dusty, ignored pages. Raw material for a story that time has made more relevant, not less. A new vein opens, begging to be mined. You pick the book up from the floor and stand. Hesitate next to the trash can wondering.

Have you learned from your mistakes? An Oscar Wilde quote tries to come back to you, but gets batted away as a colleague rounds the corner and enters the kitchen.

A book of worries

Photo: My own

The intersection of blogging and commerce is a strange place.

On this post, alex239 commented "this is a blatant advertisement for a specific brand of razors. Slaves to advertising, all of ya! so cute." 12:18 a.m.

Unsatisfied that the comment didn't show up immediately, alex expanded on that thought. "This is an obvious advertisement for a specific brand of razors in a linkbait section at the bottom of a USA Today article. Slaves to advertising, so cute." 12:19 a.m.

Now frustrated that neither comment appeared, alex concluded that at 12:20 a.m., with two comments now so clearly ignored alex concludes one thing -- "of course, censhorship, for pointing out the obvious nature of the advertising."

When I checked my email at 12:15 p.m., these three comments awaited moderation. I published them, as I have most comments on that post. The only ones not published were either too vile to publish or spam.

My initial reaction was "Who is this online avenger and why do they think it's okay to complain about a clearly labeled commercial?" My second reaction was, I'm blogging about this. Because that's what I do when something gets my attention.

But back to Alex. The comment about the post being "linkbait" stings a little.  I haven't a clue how the linking company picked my post to place at the bottom of articles ranging from USA Today to Slate. I didn't pay for it, but I'm grateful nonetheless. Perhaps the post was chosen by outbrain because of its possibly provocative title. What not to shave.

I admit wondering what people expect to read or see when they click the link. Perhaps something more like this? I think we can all agree that with my filthy mind, I could come up with far more titillating content than a story about how I shave my toes and belly button.

This pains me greatly because very few things in this world would please me more than to have all the thousands of people who have clicked that link to read something that kept them coming back for more. Instead this feels like a missed opportunity to make a great first impression.

It's the Ice, Ice, Baby of my blogging "career." Thankfully, it's not plagiarized. Take that, Vanilla Ice.

If the linkbait comment stung, Alex's censorship comment tickled me. That, too, is commerce-related. Over a year ago, I added comment moderation to battle spam comments on my older posts. Now, any post older than four days requires comment moderation. A point which is clearly stated in the comment box that alex must have missed in the rush to have a say.

A question:  Should this convince me to decline future offers to write sponsored posts?

Over the years, when I had to ask for donations, readers suggested I monetize the blog. I resisted for a long time because I worried about how it would affect my writing. Then an opportunity arrived and I decided to risk it.

The outcome has been mixed. The money helps our still precarious financial situation. Just because I have a job doesn't mean we're still not making choices between buying gasoline to get to work and food when we reach the thin end of the month. The stats and the chance to reach a wider audience (there are some who click on other posts, thank goodness) are amazing. Other new opportunities are popping up and I'm grateful for more chances to write and be paid to do so.

When writing future sponsored posts, I'll first have to censor the alex  in my head. The Worrier. The Shamer. The Constant Questioner. Can I find a way to write well and fit the requirements that sometimes are part of writing a sponsored post?

Is it better to simply decline and take the high road for my "art?" And why do I feel like an asshole using the word art to describe what I do?

I'll start with repeating the Bill Cosby quote "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone" and go from there.

You let your mind out somewhere down the road

Links you can use. For good or evil. Links like a dandelion spreading its seeds on the wind,  links like sugar, Johnny Applelink, Malcolm Gladwell's Link.

You know, links you might find mildly or wildly interesting.

David Cay Johnston gives us a Tale of Two Healthcare Plans. Warning: contains graphs, charts and the mention of taxes.

Paul Krugman (who had a cameo in Get Him to the Greek, much to my surprise and delight because if I have to sit through a film featuring Russell Brand and a scene where his character demands that his handler smuggle drugs up his butt (the handler's not his own), then I'm going to need some sort of smartypants liberal elite elixir to provide some balance. One can't sue Hollywood for brain atrophy, can one?) Where was I? Oh, yes, Paul Krugman. His piece on obstruction and exploitation. Also known as <redacted>.

I'm trying to not curse. It's an experiment, an exercise in self restraint.

Which reminds me, I'm listening to the audio version of Frank Delaney's Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show: A Novel of Ireland and have laughed uproariously while driving to and from work. Which is saying something because lately I have been in one pissed off and holler mood. To crack this marble face takes some true comedic talent.

I bring this up because in the book, there's a character who seasons every sentence with a sulfuric dash of that oh so versatile word fuck. When the narrator reports any conversations he has with said cuss monster, his mother insists he use flock instead of the other very bad word.

To wit:

...why in the flock does she need a flocking ladder to get to the flocking flowerboxes when I flocking told her that I would flocking help her in a few flocking minutes.......

It is perfect, of course, with the Irish brogue.

Douglas Coupland offers some advice to writers. Specifically, to young writers, but who's to say what's young anymore? I'm not biologically young, but my writing is young. Anyway, it's a bullet point list so it won't wear you thin with paragraphs and contains some points I haven't seen elsewhere in my search for enlightenment about writing (a procrastination tactic familiar to writers the world over.)

Gwynne Watkins interviews Amanda Palmer.

Super8. Have you seen it? Sophie interrupted her own raving about it to ask me to watch it with her. I said I'd watch a few minutes and then probably get back to whatever it was I'd been doing. Two hours later, I was still glued to the television. It held my interest enough that I didn't multitask once during the entire viewing and it made an ELO fan out of Sophie.

Bra Recycling. Surprisingly, I don't mean turning bras into charming chapeaux. Although one could, I suppose, but let's leave MathMan out of this.

I'm reading Rachel Maddow's Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power. Talk about taxing my ability to remain curse word free. I'm only up to the part about how Reagan funded the Contras in Nicaragua and have already worn out the phrases holy shit, motherfucker, Jesus Christ, What the hell? and I'll be damned.

Please just stop. For all that was good and holy in Mrs. Johnson's 7th grade language class, please. Stop.

And finally Fred Armisen on Alec Baldwin's Here's the Thing. Via the incomparable Bob Lefsetz. If you've been asking if you should keep chasing your dream, you must listen to this.

What's making you click these days?

...deserves a quiet night...

When I was a child, we had two mimosa trees. One dominated the front of the house, making the once dull yard with nothing but a waxy yew hedge seem somehow transformed.

The second stood sentry next to our three-foot swimming pool, lending it a tropical air with its fern-like leaves and fluffy pink flowers. On the rare occasion that I could swim alone, I was a mermaid. The flowers were birds, fluttering and hovering, perching on the leaves against the backdrop of the setting sun.

To me the trees were special. Exotic. Their multiple trunks arched like fountains with leaves making sprays of green. I'd never seen mimosas before and couldn't remember having ever seen them in anyone else's yard.

The trees didn't survive the winter of 1979.

Recently, I asked my mother where she got those mimosa trees. She said she hadn't thought of them in a long time. They were dug up as volunteer saplings along the Ohio River near the factory where my father worked. He brought them home and planted them sometime in the early 1970s. She asked my father to confirm this fact and he did.

Why did I want to know?

I was thinking about how things look at different times, in different places, I said. Perspective.

Here in Georgia, mimosas are invasive plants. They grow like weeds along highways, crowding out other plants, shoving forward, presenting, no - flaunting their flowers.

Exotic? Not at all. They're dead common. Flashy. Gauche. What seemed so unique to my young, Midwestern eyes is rendered nearly invisible by its ubiquity.

Until I stop and really notice them. Then I am transported. I'm a mermaid again, gliding through the warm water, breaking the surface into the cooling air, my dark hair slicked back. Now I'm a seal, glistening wet, my compact, young form all slick muscle, taut skin.

I glance up at the mimosa with its graceful arches and exotic pink flowers and push off the wall, smooth strokes taking me back across the small pool where the porch light reflects as diamonds on each ripple.

Has your perspective changed? What do you see with your new eyes?  What do you see with your old eyes?

You think you're one of a special breed, Part three

Continued from here.

I don't want to reach. Or push. I enjoy this lack of angst. This calm. Things that would have caused me major emotional upsets a few months ago now glance off me like I'm wearing armor.

Another friend, another conversation. This time about love and commitment. About freedom and recognizing your limitations. Like when you're good at the front end of a relationship, but fizzle when the expectations become too much and people get hurt. About being honest with yourself and with potential lovers. About how understandings crumble.

It doesn't matter what a woman says. She wants to be the one who makes you want to change. She has to believe she's special. If you can't quit the habit of getting in, then you have to be braced for what comes with getting out. And maybe you care too much or you don't care enough. Either way, you're caught in the ripple of emotion. It's unavoidable.

We want. We want. We want - what?

There's never a good time to break someone's heart.

I remember, but I can't recover the feeling. The broken heart. The suffering and self-loathing. It's out of reach. Maybe it's the anti-depressants. Maybe it's time. Maybe it's an unremembered blow to the head.

I'm reading Augusten Burroughs' This Is How - Help for the Self, Proven Aid in Overcoming
Shyness, Grief, Molestation, Disease, Fatness, Lushery, Spinsterhood, Decrepitude, & More
For Young and Old Alike. In the first three essays alone, Burroughs writes of letting yourself feel your feelings and calling them what they are. Anger, fear, hate, pain, joy, happiness, love.

Burroughs nails that self-help trope affirmation to the wall with one word. Bullshit. He beseeches the reader to stop lying to herself/himself and to others. If you've pasted on a smile for the benefit of others, Burroughs wants you to wipe that fucking smile from your face. It's doing more harm than good.

He, too, speaks of long marriages.

Long marriages have ended in ruin over tiny and insignificant grievances that were never properly aired and instead grow into a brittle barnacle of hatred.

brittle barnacle of hatred

brittle barnacle of hatred

brittle barnacle of hatred

brittle barnacle of hatred

brittle barnacle of hatred

Raise your hand if you've seen that phrase play out. The pebble in the shoe becomes a boulder you can't leapfrog, can't quite ignore, can't quite wish away.

Okay, hands down.

During my dreadful commute, I'm listening to Jonathan Franzen's collection of essays Farther Away. In it, he recounts his 2011 commencement address at Kenyon College titled Pain Won't Kill You. He also writes of his friend David Foster Wallace who, he concludes, was bored and thus suicidal. I'm being facile, of course. But that's the gist. Enough of it, at least. His point in both essays is that we have to experience our feelings because the alternative is what?

Numbness? Zombie-like calm? (I just typed clam instead of calm. Zombie Clams from the Zen Zone - a recipe for life as a reformed rager. This could be the title of what I don't do next.)

What is this? A conspiracy of library books? Franzen and Burroughs - pushers of feelings. The bastards.

Here I sit all counter-intuitive wearing all black on a sunny day. But my toenails are painted purple. There may be hope for me yet, Doctor Freud.

Mustering all the hypocrisy I could, I gave each of the children the "Your feelings of sadness are natural in a time of grief"speech. I took the day off work and spent time with Sophie who'd watched as Morris was born during hurricane season 2004. Now she'd experience his death. We cried together and talked about what we could have done differently to have perhaps saved him. We didn't know how sick he was. We pulled on our matching mother/daughter hairshirts and left the house to find something to keep Sophie busy.

When we reached the ice cream eating stage of grief, we finally indulged in some lighter thoughts. We laughed about Morris's kookier habits. How he was so spoiled as a kitten that he never learned to cover his leavings. The three older cats did it for him. How he didn't say much, but when he did, he spoke with an earnestness unusual to ginger tabbies who are typically wisecrackers. How he would trap the kids under his bulk and breathe in their faces.

When we started to cover the self-blaming territory again, I told Sophie we'd have to knock it off or I'd be in a corner cutting myself. She wiped away the one tear that slipped down her lashes and announced "I'm never having pets when I'm an adult. This hurts too much."

I pushed the hair back from her face, touched her soft cheek and felt it still damp. Her deep brown eyes were so sad. This is her first real loss. It almost feels like my own first real loss. As another friend put it, "The death of a cat who is like family hits you harder than the death of some family members because they're more a part of your every day life."

I finally allowed myself to feel the pain, too. To point at it and think what I'd been holding back. I wanted my fluffy boy back.  I wanted to walk through the door and see him on the silver metal table and say "Hey, bud." I wanted to see him waddle quickly across the room as Nathan called him Tub Tub. I wanted to see him make the great leap onto the dining room table only to slide to the other end and come skidding to a stop just in time.

Most of all, I wanted another day so we could see sooner that he was critical. I wanted another day to save him.

I suddenly wanted to rant and rave and kick something across the room. Break glass, beat my fists and let out the sobs I've choked back for days. Not the silent tears I hadn't been able to control, but the heavy, heaving sobs that make your head ache and wear you out. Those I'd been able to control. Funny how that works.

Instead, I took a deep breath, popped what was left of my ice cream cone into my mouth and savored the crunch of it. I looked at Sophie's bowed head, her hands folded together as if in prayer, but I knew she wasn't praying. Earlier in the day, she'd told me how she wished she could really believe in god and heaven so that she could imagine Morris somewhere besides just gone.

The sun was blotted out by a cloud and she gave a little shudder. In front of her, her cup of Superman ice cream melted into a tie-dyed puddle. I reached out and she took my hand.

Love and pain. Forever linked.

You think you're one of a special breed, Part two

Continued from here.

Last night I dreamed I was engaged to a guy I knew in high school. In the dream, his family lived on a big, successful farm. He left me behind at the house I grew up in and instructed me to take the car he left for me when I was ready to join him at the farm. I did as he said and as the car drew closer to the farm, I realized that I was no longer driving it. It was operating of its own volition. What I mean was, it was steering itself. I couldn't change its path or make it stop.

As the farm entrance gates closed behind me, I saw a breathtaking vista before me. I reached for my camera and tried to brake so I could get a photo of it. The car wouldn't stop and I missed the shot I wanted of an unobstructed view. When the car eventually stopped outside a tidy, low-slung ranch house where my fiance waited. I was struck by how I'd never found him attractive. The doors automatically unlocked and I emerged, furious at how my life was suddenly being controlled.

In dreams, I'm still capable of berating someone. Thank goodness.

Not every emotion is dulled. I'm in the middle of a sickening crush on MathMan.  The children are, of course, appalled.

In long-term relationships, this is cyclical. Sometimes I'm crazy, swoony in love and lust with him. Other times I'm playing out Merry Widow fantasies in my head. Sometimes he boos as I'm getting dressed because the Naked Show is over or he charms me by telling me that my panties are like candy wrappers. Other times he completely ignores me, so caught up in his own things and probably playing out Merry Widower fantasies of his own. He, however, has the good sense to never admit it.

He sends me texts in the middle of the day. I miss you.

I miss you, too. I want to be home in bed with you. It might be the most I write all day.

A friend took me to lunch. I won't call him old even though he's ten years older than he was when we met. So am I. I look different. He doesn't, but I tried not to obsess about that while we sat facing each other.

He said those words that give anyone who puts their writing out there both a thrill and a reason to cringe.

I read your blog.

He told me he thought it was really funny and, of course, I lapped that up like a big gray cat.

He wasn't finished. So what's happening with your novel?

I eyed him as I licked the compliment from my whiskers. I wanted to enjoy every drop.

"It's on hold. I don't think I'm a novelist." One by one I dealt out my excuses. Time, energy, depression, money worries. They fell flat on the table, scattered and meaningless. After a few moments' indulgence, he pulled that face that says I've heard enough.

The conversation meandered over smoked brisket until we wound back around to writing. He had an idea of what I could write about it. It's not a bad idea and I've already spent some time researching it. Man, that seems like two lifetimes ago. I've captured it in a notebook so I won't forget, but an idea isn't enough to prompt me to action anymore.

Continued

You think you're one of a special breed, Part one

I know that I'm best taken in small doses so this long post is divided into three parts.

Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos. - Stephen Sondheim

I've known artists who sought chaos first so they could eventually create their way out of it. Through the pinhole of judgment, I viewed the habit as an excuse to drink or get high or sleep around. To be an asshole was as much a part of the creative process as was anything else.

Even though I'm aces at being an insufferable asshole, I'd rather chew glass than claim my churlishness is due to my artistic nature.  When I'm being an ass, it's because I'm Scotch-Irish, my father's daughter, a product of my environment, because I never learned to deal appropriately with my anger, because I enjoy being that way on some level, because I am. I am simply and most-assuredly an asshole. I want to keep it to a minimum, but don't always reach that goal.

But being difficult because I'm creative? Please. I don't see myself an artist. I write to process things, not to create. Sure, I like to tell a story, to share something, to make people feel, to allow myself to feel through the words, but that's therapy not art.

When I wrote my now fallow novel, I attempted to transition from word self-medication to trying to create a new world, a new reality, a new order. I wasn't ready. That story evolved from one thing to another to another until it was unrecognizable. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I don't think that's how cogent, well-written novels are formed.

Later, I began taking anti-depressants and found a job with a very long commute. Writing to process things became less necessary and time became more precious. My already struggling habit of writing suffered an immediate blow.

Now instead of immediately turning to the act of writing through my emotions, I pause and rest with them. What I've noticed is that they're blunted. There's a buffer between me and passion for the things that had once consumed my imagination. Even the sadness I feel about the death of Morris is smooth around the edges. I leaked tears when I counted out the food bowls - four instead of five - but there's no pain in my chest, no unstoppable keening, no hurt that translates to the physical. I wipe the tears with the back of my hand and move on.

Other emotions have cooled. No longer mercurial. I'm almost glacial.

My rages lack vigor to the point that they don't even qualify as rages anymore. They're more like yawn inspiring rambles about things that kind of annoy me. Nate provided some parental disappointment recently and I didn't even raise my voice. Instead I opted for disappointed looks and conversation about the practicalities of his boneheaded activities.

My passive aggression is about 5% aggression. How disappointing for someone who has truly enjoyed that label in the past. Now I'm the dreaded passive sentence.

My once well-honed ability to spread the misery lacks its former expertise. My loved ones are grateful.

Is this what contentment feels like?

Continued.

Girl in the war

Bethany (the hilarious Bethany) gave me a gentle tap, tagging me with the dreaded meme. I suspect she knows I'm not the meme type (too many rules), but Bethany is hardly one to bow to convention. Plus she's been one of my favorite Tweeter/Writer/Blogger/Fashion Icon/Mom to Preciousness/Sister/Ex-Pats for what seems like at least a couple of years now.

In internet time, that's like Dog Years.

So how could I say no?

This particular meme involves works in progress. It's specific to to writers, but anyone can get into the act as far as I'm concerned. You know the old saying, right? 

The more of us in the water, the better the game of Marco Polo.

Here are those blasted rules I mentioned:

    Go to page 77 of your current MS/WIP.

    Go to line 7.

    Copy down the next 7 lines–sentences or paragraphs–and post them on your blog.

    Tag 7 authors and let them know Only if you want to. I'm not the boss of you.

Okay, so here's mine. From my most recent and now fallow schnovel.

Her root beer eyes blazed with all this new information. 

“Wow. Barack..?” 

“Obama.”

 “I don’t know what to say about any of this. It seems so fantastical. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.” She furrowed her brow.

“I wish you knew my mum and dad. I’d love to know how they’re doing. And my sister Josie. That’s the hardest part. Not knowing what’s happened to them.”

 I took a deep breath. Our light-hearted conversation had taken that wicked turn, back to our loved ones, the people left behind 

“Do you wonder if we’re dead?” 

“I did. I mean, when I first arrived in this time I often thought this was some sort of limbo. Or perhaps Purgatory? I never did go in much for church so I didn’t quite know how to explain it.” She released the mug and dropped her hands to her lap. 

“I suppose the longer I’m here, the less it will freak me out.” I needed something to hold on to. A half smile fluttered across her face. “That is true. But you’ll be reminded of your other life and then you’ll worry and wonder. It can make you feel quite hopeless if you let it. It’s been like that for me for nearly three years. I suppose that’s one good thing about this bloody war. It keeps me busy.” 

What have you in progress?

I'm sprawled across the Davenport of despair*

Thought I'd finally cashed in my chips, did you? I'd see you checking in on me and I'd be all oh, man, I can't think of a thing to write and I'm letting these people down. Think, woman, think! Nothing happens. There's nary a creative thought to be found among the abandoned Habitrails, faded French conjugations, and cravings for Marathon Bars cluttering my cranium.

My pleas for the cats to do something bloggable go unheeded. In a lame attempt at slapstick, the cat who's older than Sophie prat fell off the back of the davenport yesterday. It was like watching someone's grandmother tumble down a flight of stairs. My shocked laughter was muted by my concern with whether she'd broken a hip.

"Oh, Daisy! Are you okay?"

She shot me a reproachful look, shook herself and said, "I don't plan to sue." As she strolled away, she looked over her shoulder, her lip curled in defiance. "This time."

I used the word davenport because it doesn't get used enough. I looked it up on wikipedia. A proper noun first, it morphed into a generic term for sofa in the Midwest and Northern New York. Which would explain why my thoroughly Midwestern mother used davenport interchangeably with the harsher sounding couch. When I was a child, I liked it when she said davenport. It seemed more exotic with its multiple syllables.

The family has been no help either. They haven't said or done a funny thing in over a week. Unless you count Sophie telling me that having sex burns calories so I should keep doing it. The friend she was showing off in front of laughed at the irreverence of the exchange. I pulled out my phone and poked at the keyboard.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm texting Daddy."

"About sex?"

"No. About calories."

I thought about telling you about the strange dreams I've been having, but instead I'll show you this visual and leave the rest to your imagination.

It's fair to say that I have anything to offer. I'm profoundly sorry for this lapse. I'm distracted to the point of scrubbing old cookie sheets with a solution of baking soda and peroxide. They don't yet gleam, but give me time and a few more news stories about the ongoing attempts of the Right to dismantle the hard-won reproductive rights of women or another beating of a gay teen and those cookie sheets will be mirrors upon which we can all scrutinize our foreheads for etched lines of confusion and consternation.

You can't rub those lines out with your thumb either. I've tried.

Now I'm turning to you. Suggestions for topics are welcome. Questions, ideas, a first line, a last one? Want to guest post? Fire away.

P.S. This.


*Not really, but I love this line from the Warren Zevon song Disorder in the House.