reasons I didn’t get to the novel today

I did start, but let myself find distractions:

* head ache
* fatigue
* waiting on clothes dryer delivery guys (who were nice on the phone but when they arrived and discovered a problem, the lead guy treated me like I was a dumbass simply because I have breasts and chose to ask questions rather than just stick my finger up my nose and say, “Oh, ok, bye now.”)
* need to call an electrician (not an emergency, but annoying and related to the above)
* waiting on a call back
* phone calls from friend who was doing me a favor
* quick visit from Girl and her dad who are on their way to the county fair where the Girl will march with the band
* soft kitty who needs petting
* urge to scrub bathroom clean

step four (messy process)

list:

* decide whether that approach is passive-aggressive or a whispered way of screaming a message.
* strip beds and launder sheets
* transcribe notes from BLP workshop
* listen to your right ear going deaf
* wrestle with this notion of invisible (disappearing) vs. mirror reflecting people back to themselves (a different form of vanishing)
* write this mirror, pool, reflection, vanishing, invisible business into a story/poem
* let yourself miss your father
* visit (not)husband’s condo to check on things, pick up DVDs, take Girl’s band uniform, shoes, etc.

I’m reading two books right now, a Charles de Lint novel (had to quit Onion Girl until later and move backward chronologically in the “Newford” series because the cast of character in that book was too huge for me to follow) and Jincy Willet’s novel. They are so different, but both decent reads. de Lint is poetic, magical, rich. Willet is funny, dark, so realistic I’m certain I’ve met the characters before. I read both for pleasure and as a way of studying novel writing.

I am feeling guilty about sharing the first half of an unfinished work-in-progress with too busy friends. The book is dreadful at this point (but only parts of it are dreadful), and I think it was cruel of me to toss it out there like that. I feel ready for a little input but loathe to request it. (within the next week, especially if I get the second half ready to email, I will take a deep breath and say, “So, whenever you’re ready, I’ve donned my fake thick skin and can take whatever you dish out, but if you can’t stand it and don’t want to read any more, please, just don’t. OK, thanks, and bye. kiss, kiss.”)

Wait. I don’t think that last paragraph came out right.

Oh well.

It’s 10:18 a.m. If I fly through my ablutions, I could probably get out-of-the-house chores all done by 1 or 1:30.

This is a dreadful post.

I am dreadful, dreadful.

(reminder: this is not a blog; it’s a journal, and I’m still trying to find my (not)”blogging” voice. Am used to writing something far less…formal.)

step three (insomnia)

Step three involves allowing whatever is to be.

It will be 4 a.m. here soon. I’m completely awake, not a little bit sleepy, not even kind of inclined toward dream.

I might actually have to give in and self-medicate with a Benadryl (allergies have sucked today, anyway, so I wouldn’t be completely abusing this lovely miracle OTC drug). That was my mother’s drug of choice for me when I was an insomniac high school student well before the days when you could get Benadryl over the counter. It was so convenient having a doctor daddy.

My computer makes odd, sizzling noises.

No. They aren’t sizzling sounds. Just the edge of sizzling, just creepy enough to remind me of a scene in that novel I’ve been finishing for years.

I truly haven’t had time to write, not anything real, not poem or chapter or new novel beginning. For a couple of weeks there, all these wonderful ideas jostled each other in my brain. Then I drove to Florida and got, well, tired, and the ideas just lay themselves down in a stack and went to sleep.

Today/yesterday was a day of rest and reading. I didn’t do anything at all. I didn’t pick up my house, didn’t cook, didn’t empty the dishwasher (until something woke me up at 1:40 a.m.). Didn’t write anything but blog posts, didn’t check email, barely checked for my own pulse.

One of the things that happened to me in San Francisco at Diane Frank’s amazing poetry workshop was that I felt for a long weekend that I might not be so invisible, that my colors were, maybe, brighter than I realized, that the things I make are vibrant and appealing. But the group I was with was unlike any group I’ve ever encountered. It was the combination of spirits.

Oh, God. I sound so … new age.

But how else can I put it? There was spirit and energy and practically the idea of auras.

It was magic.

I felt visible and beautiful and that I could possibly kind of sort of some day even maybe for two seconds consider that what I do, this writing shit, has value and is or could be art.

In my real reality, this time when I’m parenting a beautiful and brilliant but believe me not exactly undemanding teenage girl, when I’m aging and things begin to hurt but I’m trying not to notice, when I’m extremely aware of my mortality and the fact that I haven’t accomplished nearly as much as my brilliant siblings (who love me anyway despite the fact that I’m a monumental failure), I become invisible again.

Less significant.

My stuff doesn’t shine.

People either run into me in stores in the mall because they can’t see me or look at me weirdly because I don’t fit here.

One of the sad things about having no parents (though I should be over this since I’m 51 now; my father has been gone 10 years; my mother gone for going on 16) is that I no longer have in my life that person who could see me, could see through my shit-coated exterior to the beautiful child he/she made, know with ultimate certainty that no matter what, I was of value.

No. This isn’t coming out quite right and sounds far more pathetic than it should.

I think what might be happening is that much as I love seeing, witnessing, watching, reading, encouraging other people, I also feel an almost involuntary pull to do less witnessing, more living and grappling, more demanding.

It’s a scary thought for a wallflower, but I want to be …

gosh, this is such an alien concept to me that I can’t find the right words. I was going to say that I wanted to be the prom queen instead of the wallflower, but that doesn’t “resonate” with me because my high school had no proms, no queens. I would be stealing someone else’s metaphor.

It’s 4:07 a.m. I think I’ll do that self-medicating thing even though it’s ridiculous time for it and I won’t be able to wake up until 11 a.m. I don’t have to be anywhere until 6 p.m., don’t have a child to feed and drive around (she’s in Florida, after all), a boss to please.

I’ll finish working this out tomorrow/later today, after I get a little sleep.

By the way, I love the new book I started reading by Jincy Willet. It’s called The Writing Class, and it’s so fucking familiar to me that I find myself snickering about every other page. I was worried that I wasn’t going to like the main character, but I do. I started liking her more when I read the chapter about her blog.

So there.

back to trying to sleep.

(reminder: this is not a blog; it’s a journal.)

step two (lists)

The second step, or 19th step or 45th step, forward, of course, not backward (yesterday I went forward and then backward then forward again), is to rest, then settle, then sort, select, dig hands and head and heart into writing, revising, editing.

Small things that brought me joy yesterday:

* That bald biker I saw on the freeway on his red motorcycle with those toy bald eagles. His destination was my town, and I kind of want to try to find him to give him a cookie.

* The reflection in my rearview mirror of my teenaged daughter dozing in the back seat of my car when I drove her and her daddy to Columbus yesterday. Good God, she’s so beautiful.

* Wheat Thins and slices of mozarella cheese.

* The realization after reaching page 55 that the memoir I’m reading isn’t annoying; it’s delightful.

* That the server who fucked up my dinner order yesterday evening made a joke when he brought my dessert and then thanked me profusely for having a sense of humor after I burst out laughing (“Here’s your eggplant pomodoro,” he said as he placed the tiny cup of tiramisu in front of me.).

* Barnes and Noble and the gift of a book I’ve never heard of by an author I haven’t yet read.

* My soft, soft cat.

The phone call from my sister just before my fiasco of a dinner, the later phone call (I was in bed, but, shh, don’t tell him) from my younger brother, the two texts from my older brother.

* The understanding that when I am tired, I absolutely cannot see myself through my family’s eyes and tend to believe they think that I’m a worthless twat, but that’s the fatigue talking, not my siblings. The understanding that they simply don’t understand me, but that they love me, anyway, and know I’m … some kind of wonderful but don’t know exactly what kind of wonderful I am.

* My quiet house

I was going to make a second list of things that made me cranky yesterday, but I’m actually forgetting what those things were, and that kind of list will only get in the way of the settling down and diving into creative work.

If I can finish the memoir I’m reading before 7 p.m. (doubtful. I have about 160 pages to go, and I have some writing I need/want to do today), I’ll take myself to see Julie and Julia, which was supposed to be a kind of a birthday treat with a friend, but she went to the midnight showing Thursday with freer friends who aren’t parenting teens or have partners in parenting. That she went without me is a gift, too, because I love to go to movies by myself far more than I like to attend movies with anyone but my daughter.

(reminder: this is not a blog; it’s a journal.)

step one

It could as easily be step 17 1/2 as step one. Step into now. Step backward. Step over the dog shit in the yard (we have no dog, haven’t had a dog since our schnauzer died in 2004).

Step, set, test, stress.

No, no stress here, not today.

Today, I am 51. I’ve been dreading today for months and months, that step over the line from 50 to being in my 50s. Last year on my birthday, I took myself away on a lovely vacation with my wonderful daughter to visit one of my favorite people in one of my favorite cities. It was 08/08/08. Very cool.

Today, the numbers are all tilted and odd, except for those eights. I love the eights, round and balanced. I like being an August “baby.” I like that we were always on vacation on my birthday when I was a kid. I like that I started school young and then got younger because I skipped a grade (sometimes, I was two years younger than my classmates).

I am not like a Leo. I am quiet and pretend that I don’t like to be the center of attention.

On my birthday, about my birthday, I’m passive-aggressive. I don’t want to make a fuss, but when no one remembers (because I hide the date), I find that I want someone to make a small fuss.

Today, I’m driving my daughter and her dad to their hotel in Columbus where they’ll stay overnight. Tomorrow, they leave early for Florida, their annual vacation. I don’t mind “losing” my kid on my birthday. They’ll take me to dinner, maybe to a bookstore where I’ll make them buy me some novels I don’t need.

Or maybe not.

I’ll drive home, feed my cat, crawl into bed with a book, sleep tomorrow until I wake up.

While they’re gone, I’m going to write. I’m going to transcribe my notes from the San Francisco poetry workshop that feels so far away and unreal now (I’ve completely lost the magic). I’ll send the second half of my novel to the friends who are interested in reading it. I’ll let myself drift to a new project, maybe write some poems.

All this in a week? Well, maybe not, but I can start, take a step, maybe three, maybe 17.

I don’t really mind being in my 50s. We’re beautiful, us matronly sorts. We’re funny and real and warm and extremely kind. So we’re a gift.

*

(reminder: this is not a blog; it’s a journal.)