"The objects for which there is no satisfactory solution."

The above is a quote from Joan Didion's newest book Blue Nights.  She is referring to the many mementos she has of people and time gone by, some of which is here or there in places that make  some sense and then there are 'the objects for which there is no satisfactory solution.'

This is why she loves non-fiction.  This is also why I love non-fiction.  As she said in the interview I mentioned yesterday, "there is more space" in non-fiction.  With fiction you are compelled to follow a narrative.  And as we all 'know' narratives don't take too kindly to 'the objects for which there is no satisfactory solution.'  Those must be tossed out as unwieldy, perhaps too beautiful or too big or too small, but for whatever reason not right.

So much of life in my experience fits into this category, which is why I resist narrative so strongly.  I feel it masks more than it reveals.

Having said that, in Mary Karr's excruciating memoir of her childhood The Liars' Club (referring to the effect one of her father's tall tales, as told to his group of friends, the eponymous liars' club, who listen to his stories in particular with attentive respect, even when they know they are being lied to somehow, or should do) "I've plumb forgot where I am for an instant, which is how a good lie should take you. At the same time, I'm more where I was inside myself than before Daddy started talking, which is how lies can tell you the truth."

So perhaps it is living on this line that's important - when writing 'non-fiction' knowing it is always to some extent fictional, contingent, subjective (Didion says when she started placing herself in her journalistic stories it was not the done thing but she felt it was necessary to allow the reader to know "who that was at the other end of the voice") and when speaking or writing fiction knowing it can penetrate to someone's core, but perhaps only if the recipient knows it's a lie.  In the section Karr is describing, it's the first time she is complicit with her father and knows he's lying.  Perhaps it is that knowledge that allows her the other feelings?

When referring to the other men in the liars' club Karr says "Daddy never fessed up to the lie that I know. It stayed built between him and the other men like a fence he'd put up to keep them from knowing him better."  So without knowing the truth of the lie, something is lost.

Didion was so clear that memory is a liar, that all we remember is what we do not want to remember.  I think she's right in the end.  If a memory is painful, we'd rather not have that, but sometimes, too, good memories can bring us closer to the lack of whatever moment/time/place/person that was.  She is obsessed in Blue Nights with "how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here."  She then repeats the phrase: "How inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here is another thing I could not afford to see."

She reads these phrases, says these things, sitting on a chair looking like an oversized, very calm exotic bird - quite thin, quite beautiful, thankfully allowing her skin to be wrinkly in that same exquisite way that Louise Bourgeois' face became carved with all her life's suffering and laughter mapped on it for all to see.  These women look heroic to me, like statues prior to death.  I imagine that is not how they feel or in Bourgeois' case felt, but to a woman like me (of a certain age...) these women are heros.  They have carved out their writing and art into the world, which finally appreciates it/them.  They have suffered huge losses, but they survived.  They see so keenly.  They are the wise ones.

Doris Lessing wrote about the 'wise ones' in one of her books, I think it was the Golden Notebook, and she speaks of these people as those who will walk through and over whatever is necessary to survive, not give up, give in, shy away.  She was writing that in her 40s I believe, in a bid to become one of the wise ones, which she of course has become.  Is.

Mary Karr is in her 50s and is walking the same path, is probably already a wise one, but I have no doubt will continue in this walk and become even wiser.  I hope she too survives well into her dotage so we can benefit from her words.  I hope I can live that long, too, so I can finish all the projects I so want to write and create.  I am not sure I can possibly finish them all, but I am lucky, I realize writing this, so lucky: to have so many ideas.  To want to create that badly and to have time (I hope) to do so...

My teaching for the semester ends on Thursday.  Once I have finished marking and get some paperwork into Hunter for the acting class, I will be able to focus on the writing and such for a blissful 6 weeks.  Well, that and all my shit from London arriving in a couple weeks and deciding where on earth to put it all. There will be many objects for which there is not satisfactory solution.  That will take about a week, then holidays, etc...but I promise myself as a solemn oath to take big chunks of time to write and do my own work.

I want to be one of the wise ones, too, which means I need to be more ruthless with my time and energy than I am.  This makes me wonder if I will ever be truly wise or perhaps more like my meditation practice (which I refer to as 'dumbass meditation' because I don't even attempt not to think, which is like impossible anyway - I just sit there, eyes shut, coffee cup to my left and breathe for about 25 minutes with coffee sip intervals - but 15 years of that every day!).  Perhaps, then, the best I can aspire to is dumbass wise.  Somehow that seems more probable and like attainable...

So, now to preparing my last review for this semester of the Fundamentals of Interpersonal Communication, God help us all and especially my students...I do my best.

"to be an artist is a privilege" Louise Bourgeois

I am glad to report I began work on my Dick and Jani (grandmothers) book again today.  I remembered that it is meant to be written in dumb notebooks in pen so I don't get intimidated, that a lot of the writing can be crap and the point is to keep going.  And in doing it this way, I think I hit on a way to do what David Shields was suggesting of keeping in the forefront the questions about authenticity, truth, etc.  This includes talking about the process of finding my grandmothers as well as writing from their POV, so that there is no attempt at seamlessness or hiding what/how I am doing this.  Somehow this seems very important, as it does allow for all the questions about the project to emerge and about autobiography and biography to have their place, not to mention the thin line between fiction and non-fiction.  Just one incident of one of the Bukoskis telling me my grandmother (Dickie)'s father was a train conductor spawned pages of writing, because the census form shows him doing 'telegraphy' for the railroad, which presumably meant he was sending telegrams.  Or maybe not, as I write that now, I realize I need to check this.  Or the census could be wrong....and on and on it goes, and that's just one tiny so-called fact.

What I re-discovered today is that I write my way through issues rather than think through them.  Somehow, if I let it flow solutions arise.  Of course when I go to type all this stuff up, a lot is going to end up on the metaphorical cutting room floor, but that's OK.  This is so exciting, because I was getting depressed about it and afraid all the research and the dark emotions it brought up was going to stall the project out, but it looks like no, it does not have to do that, and I am really relieved.

Also, I discovered through the fictional/memoir bits, wherein I am writing from my grandmothers' points of view as children that I was somehow channeling photos I had seen but did not remember when I was writing.  I found them again when I looked through the albums for Jani's age and what she was wearing (in 1919 for example, her father and her, age 3, standing next to their first Ford - one of those glorious old-fashioned looking cars that I can't believe anyone actually had - they seem like they should just be in movies).  This proves to me that everything I see is somewhere in my brain and when I just let it rip with the writing, it comes out.  This is really exciting.

I'm happy, too, because I wrote in the middle of the afternoon after walking across Central Park, dealing with stupid banking stuff and walking around my old neighborhood on East 83rd Street.  And you know what I discovered - or more accurately remembered - I do not like that neighborhood very much.  It's loud, noisy, full of stupid stores and just basically annoying.  I was surprised to have this response, as usually I feel quite nostalgic, especially since I lost a rent-stabilized apartment that I had loved.  And I do miss that apartment, but not that neighborhood.

This was a good thing to remember, because I realized that the nostalgia I feel for it is just that - nostalgia, memory glossed over with cotton candy.  And for the first time I forgave myself for telling the truth when the landlord asked if I was coming back soon to NYC from London in 2006, and I said no, which was true, but lost me the apartment.  I forgave myself because I see very clearly now - I don't want this new adventure to be about going back to old things but instead about moving forward.

However, I am also disappointed tonight because an opportunity that looked like it might solve a lot of problems in terms of housing and finance does not look like it will happen.  I was so excited about it because it looked so good and felt so right, but the person who is making the decision has someone else in mind who is probably a better fit.  I found myself wanting to cry after that phone call, but did not because I talked myself out of it, which was dumb.  I should have just let myself cry and then be done with it.  Now, the emotions will gnaw around the edges of me for a while when they could have just cleanly moved through.  Sigh.

I am hoping this means there is something better around the corner, but of course I just now spent hours pouring over apartment ads instead of letting it go (another reaction provoked doubtless by not letting myself cry and be done with it) and now I am bleary eyed and light-headed.  I was also light-headed contemplating the possibility of the job/housing situation that most likely fell through, however, so I think perhaps this is anxiety and tension coming from wanting something a lot and being afraid I won't get it.

There are also some concrete steps I need to take to pursue ways of making money, some of which I have taken but many of which I have not.  Partly, this is due to seeing friends and finding out things that way, but also part of it is bad planning on my part and too much time checking emails and whatnot.

Having said that, I did accomplish a lot today and also managed to walk around in a gorgeous Central Park during another sunny blue sky day, so I think it's time to get ready for bed, finally have the little cry I need to have and sleep well.

Oh and I am so excited to know I am writing again - hooray!  When I am engaged creatively I feel this profound sense that every dinky stupid ass thing I have ever experienced, thought, read or felt will be somehow turned into art and that is such a great feeling.  It's like the great cosmic recycling project.  And thank God for that.  As Louise Bourgeois said on a documentary about her life (when she was scolding another artist for complaining that being an artist was hard), "being an artist is a privilege!"  I remember an alumna of my high-school writing that for her being an artist meant living with a sense of constant insecurity but also the greatest freedom.  That is a paraphrase but it stuck with me, and the older I get the truer it becomes.

So thank you God/dess for the privilege.  And help me continue to vacuum (Brits: Hoover) up my life and turn it into something for others.  And please, please, please, help me finish this book and don't let it be the fourth one that almost gets finished and sits on a shelf.  This is my humble prayer.  Sort of (humble)... And anyone reading this who wants to encourage me in that direction and pester me until the thing is finished, I hereby give you rights (and privileges!) in that regard.