Turned To Stone, Or, Closed Minds

I'm sitting here listening to Ingrid Michaelson's music, which isn't diva force but is spider-web strong. It's been another good day, but not the most productive of writing days. I'm not quite sure what a productive writing day would be for me--finishing a novel in a single day? Writing the entire New York Times Book Review section? I have a tendency of grading my accomplishments harshly. Particularly since most of the writing today was behind the scenes: an article on a library event tonight and a blog post on the blog that is designed to back up my resume with English instead of that resume-ese that I hate writing in. I'm not sure if any employers read it, but after reading a post today from my friend Robin I don't really have an excuse not to look it up.

Speaking of reading, or giving writers a chance...

A few weeks back I took up the challenge from a columnist who backed Naipaul despite his diminishments of women writers and decided to give him another chance as a reader. In her article (which I cannot find now, Lord love me) she stated that we shouldn't discount good writers just because of their beliefs. I'm in full agreement. Hemingway and Amis were/are as much of masochists as Naipaul, and yet I would gladly read them. Naipaul, as another commenter on another blog put it, is just "tedious." Tedious is kind. I found the best way to get to sleep was to read Naipaul, and that was with my reading glasses on. I had tried "A Bend In the River" when Naipaul first won the Nobel, and the cure for insomnia happened then, and this time it was "A House For Mr. Biswas," another yawner. I just couldn't justify any more than 87 pages of such behavior.

I'm sure there are vast and great societies of people out there who find Naipaul worth putting up with despite his views. Maybe someday I'll reach their intellect. But for now I find myself relishing the Pulitzer Prize of Jennifer Egan (um, woman writer who loves language and format), Jane Austen (a comedy-of-manners writer like Naipaul who knows how to love language, and, um, a woman), and "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand" by Helen Simonson (another comedy of manners by a woman who can make south Asian and Middle Eastern characters look more intricate and regal than the British).

Life is too short, I say, for V.S. Naipaul.

Going to take a walk, grab a cup of coffee, and get in some fiction rough drafting before my library event tonight.

Write on.

A Lake House

I'm not quite sure who exactly still reads this blog, which probably makes it the safest thing on the planet to write in. I sit here looking at my dashboard with Blogger, and I realize that since I haven't been here since January it's probably a great place to play with writing, experiment, write with the truest voice I can without trying to impress, and then take that practice and write "better" with the blogs that may be more promoted.

Since I have been writing in other blogs for some time now, I don't feel guilty for neglecting this one. This one is like what relatives of mine used to own in lake houses--those summer places that you button up in the fall with boards and dropcloths and other protective measures and that you open up, usually just before or on the first big three-day holiday weekend of the spring, like Memorial Day. I wander into this one now, take the boards off the windows, shake out and fold up the dropcloths, and head, as E.B. White would write, "once more to the lake."

It's been a strange day, which it normally is when I am hormonal. I tend to have strange sleeping schedules, I tend to eat the strangest things, I'm wired for sound but too exhausted to execute, and I tend to panic easily. All I had planned for today were two things: read 100 pages of David Mitchell's "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," and visit Hayes Valley to taste ice cream. I never got to Hayes Valley, and I kept falling asleep during the novel. The sun wouldn't stay out, the Giants were offering up Jonathan Sanchez, and my downstairs neighbors were noisy. There were a million excuses not to do what I planned. At 3:30 I finally gave up, broke out all of the tools I should have for the reading, forgave myself for not getting down to Hayes Valley, and made my reading goal with the help of coffee and reading glasses. I turned on the fan in the living room for white noise. There's still time for Hayes Valley, another day.

When I finished the reading goal, I wandered the apartment, restless. What to do now? Pick up the pen and try to write something? The journal didn't yield much--about five ruled lines. I wandered, paced, again. I reached for a well-read, well-worn copy of a book that was written by a teacher of mine, even though we have only met once: "Long Quiet Highway" by Natalie Goldberg. Everything spinning in me settled in a series of ever-slowing circles until I was still. I could think. I had to find it in another voice, but find it I did. The sunset filled the lake house windows and I put on a jacket and went to find food to prepare for dinner. Pasta, sauce, and wine later, I am still calm, the lake house ready for me to spend a summer here, and write anything I damn well want to, without fear of repercussion or judgment.

And now, for a swim. Write on, dear writer.

Restoration

I woke up this morning and thought to myself that I needed some time in the fresh air--yesterday a good majority of my time was spent in bed. I wasn't sick yesterday, just tired, and usually when I'm tired there are forty things that have to be done that day. Yesterday nothing had to be done. So I stayed in bed for most of the day with books tucking me in as though a high wind might come in the room and blow me away. I finished a book, even. And I got a good deal of writing done, regardless of the fact that it went nowhere--just putting a pen to the page was enough of a treat.

This morning it was so tempting to do the same, but my mother had been speaking to me from the past about how nice the weather was ("get out there in the sunshine, young lady, before the heat wave hits"), so I picked up some Arizmendi brioche and a coffee and made for my Backyard, aka the Golden Gate Park, which is, by far, my favorite breakfast spot, regardless of what Kate's and Stacks can do. I sit on the parameter of the Music Concourse and watch the pale dirt floor traffic below the trees. Tourists of all nationalities walk there, some with cigarettes lit, and I have some private fun with a Facebook status that I don't post:

• Sarah is drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes this morning for breakfast.
• Sarah is drinking coffee and smoking other peoples' cigarettes for breakfast.
• Sarah is drinking coffee and attempting to eat breakfast while the birds around her light up.

Pretty soon I'm in a fit of inexplicable giggles and have to think of something somber to calm down. Trick is, I can't think of something somber. All I can think about is what a smart-ass I am. That doesn't help. I am my own best entertainer, but I often don't know when to shut up. I finish off the brioche, still smiling, take some ibuprofen, and call my brother to wish him a happy birthday, coffee still in hand. I get to talk to Serena for a bit, and then I finish off the coffee and write for 30 minutes or so. I talk to myself, challenge myself, all on paper. I gaze across at the deYoung, and think to myself, "Jo, how abouts we see some paintings and such this morning?" So I pack up and head across the concourse.

Back in the spring I purchased two museum memberships--one to the deYoung (which also admits two into the Legion of Honor free of charge), and one to the SFMoMA. At the time I was sending in the checks I was feeling some guilt--shouldn't I be saving this money? But since then I have paid for both memberships just in the amount of time that I have spent at the museums alone, considering how much it is to visit each time, and especially considering the exhibits that I have had the pleasure to enjoy. The memberships also give me the chance to know the museums better. I cannot yet name the paintings or artists there, but my list of favorites grows by the day. For instance, when I started out visiting the deYoung my favorites could all be found in the Saxe gallery, where all of the glassworks were held. Now I go to the observation tower, and then the wing that lies just behind the Saxe gallery. In this wing there are galleries of African American and modern art...a giant mirrored chess set with abstract mirrored chess pieces (not the true description of it, but the true one for me), a cathedral sculpted entirely of amunition, and a sculpture of an African American woman called "Steppin Out," made entirely of a sculpted hardwood with just enough features to tell that she's fiiiine. I look at her coming in and going out of the wing--I want to be her, I want an ass like hers, legs like hers, attitude like hers, shoes like her pumps. The wood she is made from is the smoothest, warmest color--I find myself in a reverse Pinocchio: "Make me of wood like that!"

Then I go upstairs, to the galleries just behind the African artifacts, to the ages of America. There I see the Revolution, the Civil War, the Hudson School, and a portrait of George Washington done in stitched dollar bills. It's a damn fine likeness, too, for being stitched AND only made of differing folding of dollar bills. It's not easy being green, is it, George? When I walk past him and to the west side of the building, there is an entire gallery of vistas. A good measure of them are of the natural parts of the Bay Area, mostly Marin, Tamalpias, and the ocean. One large one that is the size of my bedroom wall is of San Quentin in the fog. I linger with them. Then I walk through that gallery to the overlook, where a long bench of wood from New Zealand is built along one wall and faces a glass wall, where you can look out to the west side of the Music Concourse and on the sculpture garden below. I usually camp there for at least twenty minutes. Then I make my way back through the galleries and go back downstairs to the cafe to write. (With the showing of Tut at the museum, I don't get to do much writing there these days--the cafe is usually packed when I get there and I have to write elsewhere.)

Remarkably, I leave the museum every time feeling better about myself. I'm not saying that the people that I work with are stupid when I say this--but when I am continuously surrounded by people who don't care about art and literature, I start feeling like the stupid one, like art and literature don't matter, and as though I am caring about the wrong things in life. Then I go to these places and it's like the pictures are hanging on my walls, my friends are in the gallery with me, and I'm free to love what I love, without ridicule for what I love. Last week one of my employees in Oakland asked me if I saw the speech Obama made about health care. Unfortunately, I did not (was out running that night), but the employee said, "You know, I like how he talks...as though even though he could talk smarter he doesn't try to." I had to agree with him--plain-spoken articulate speech is a gift, but I have to wonder if Obama ever feels like he can't talk about the art he saw in the gallery. I have to wonder if he ever gets lonely that way. I get the feeling Obama's smart lies somewhere between the multitudes and the geniuses, and while the geniuses bore him the world secretly breaks his heart. But it can be better, I can talk them and act them to better, he may be thinking, all the while remembering the pictures at the exhibition.

I can't name the pictures at the exhibition--I too am too busy relating to Taylor Swift--but I love where they take me.

Rain

Every color here is severe this morning--the world is dripping in either a very light downpour or extremely heavy mist. I wake up depressed this morning, a different shade of blue--still have the cold and spent last night exchanging texts with yet another guy that I wish I hadn't given my number to. My shrink would have theories on how I draw these guys, but I know it's just plain old-fashioned--my mother told me to play nice with everyone, especially the losers, and now that's all that's left.

So I wake up this morning way too damn early, and can't get back to sleep. I pad out into the living room with a couple of pillows and blankets and curl up and watch a German girl try to fit in with a bunch of Norweigens. (Prolly spelled that wrong--who cares, really.) It's sweet and simple and sad and wonderful all at once. I turn off the telly around 8 and lie there, knowing that I have to get dressed and get the laundry downstairs.

I don't want to.

I move about the apartment gathering stuff, arguing with my boss and stupid men (not a statement that ALL men are stupid, just referring to the stupid ones among the men), getting dressed, sneezing, weeping. Finally everything is together. I'm fat in my jeans and it's going to be wet out there.

I drop off the laundry, though, and take one damn step at a time up Moraga/Home.

I overcame the desire to want to be somewhere, anywhere else. I overcame the desire on a minute-by-minute basis to go back down 9th to Starbucks and get a venti coffee with creme and shooger and gooey calories in it, complete with a pastry. With my cold, I had to stop several times. I accepted that. I wept some more. And I stood in the mist and allowed myself a good drenching.

I walked around the summit and back down, feeling my muscles unkink in gratitude. They weren't necessarily grateful that I was going DOWNHILL, but more along the lines that I remembered to use them at all. No problem, guys. Thanks for serving me well, today. I took Moraga to 8th and came down 8th through the fancy little cottages and brick and bottle-brush trees in pink and red and all of the wet, cool GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN...it was as though my soul drank or cleansed or rinsed or did something to rid itself of the intense dirt and desert of what I fight.

Intensity always works. :) Especially in color.

One.

At a time.

It always shocks me when I find a man to be attracted to me, particularly in the grungiest of settings and in my least feminine state.

We know from my past entries that FG can’t decide if he wants me, how he wants me, etc.

Turns out this week that one of our delivery guys has feelings for me too, and made the mistake of asking FG if he thinks I would be interested in him. FG got a little threatened, and asked me about seeing him, and I said, “Sure, why not?” for several reasons.

I don’t want to see FG anymore, and he never seems to get that. I don’t want another man who is all about the pain and suaveness and slickness.

Henry, the delivery driver, is just a plain and simple guy. (I don’t mean simple in the terms of stupid, but simple in terms of unpretentious.) He is a happy guy and doesn’t seem to harbor any feelings of smugness or superiority toward me. (FG does try to convey some superiority, but it’s unfounded, since he doesn’t make a real effort to win my respect.) Henry is a lot like Kevin James in “The King of Queens” in build and sense of humor, except Henry is a second-generation Puerto Rican who can’t speak a word of Spanish, much like me.

All of the guys love him, too. And he loves them. He also works for the trucking company, and not for my company, so there’s no barrier of manager vs subordinate there. I get the feeling he would actually call me if I gave him the option, and I get the feeling that he wouldn’t make me wait. I get the feeling that he would be respectful and funny and kind. He’s not a looker or pretty boy like Gary or FG, but he seems loving. Which I would want more than the stupid sex appeal at this stage.

FG says it’s fine if I go out with Henry, but in the end he knows that I’ll end up with him. He’s willing to make a personal threat on it. I looked at him point blank in the face and said only this, “If you’re going to kill me to keep me, go ahead. Anyone in San Francisco would do the same to me for a lot less on any given day, and I don’t have much to live for. So do as you want. In the end you’ll just deny two people life and happiness and you’ll have to live with it.”

Some days I thoroughly hate this place. But it’s good to see Henry around.