RIP Doris Lessing (1919-2013)

Doris Lessing was arguably the greatest author of the 20th Century.  I know Many of you will disagree, but if so: go now and read The Golden Notebook and the Martha Quest series, stack it up against anything else written in the 60s-80s, and tell me if you can honestly say it's better.  Yes, I am totally serious.

I found The Golden Notebook by accident in a bookstore at age 20-21.  As so many people, I had never heard of her, because she never ended up on any syllabi.  You who are reading this, even though she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007 may never have heard of her.  That's because she was unclassifiable.  No matter what box someone tried to fit her into, like the Houdini of literature, she'd find a way out.

She particularly hated the ghetto term "feminist author."  Why do I say ghetto term?  Well, think of it, especially if you are a male human being reading this right now, if you hear the phrase "feminist author" are you running out to buy her work?  No, I didn't think so.  Also, would you guess, because of that label, that she deals equally with issues of world politics, especially war, communism, Africa, England, Big Ideas, Experimentation with Form, etc…all the subject areas of the Angry Young Men of her generation?  No, you wouldn't.  You'd have images of nice middle class women chatting about their wombs or something.

That's why she hated the term.  Because she was A Writer who Was Also a Woman (heaven Forfend). Yes, her writing had feminist implications, if by feminist you mean, a naked (in every way) female voice not intimidated by anyone (including so-called feminist)'s idea of what she Should Feel, Say, Think, Care About, etc.

As a young woman who happened upon her Golden Notebook, she changed my life.  Here was a Voice, a Female Voice, whispering to me in words in a fragmented structure, evoking feelings, sensations, suspicions, Ideas, arguments, insecurities, rages, dreams, aspirations, daring, wisdom…all from a protean, flawed, human, female protagonist that I could begin to understand - because she was Not boxed into the categories reserved - even in the mid-80s - for the derogatory, second class label: Female.

She is also, as anyone following this blog will know, in the generation of my grandmothers, about whom I am writing.  They were born in 1916, she in 1919 - close enough.  Also children of violence (as Ms. Lessing called her generation - children of the wreckage of the First World War), though American.  Only one of whom attempted an escape as daring as Ms. Lessing's, who unfortunately did not start out as early or as successfully or living as long.  But she did dare.

I encourage anyone reading this post to read any and all work of Doris Lessing.  If you want to begin to understand the great breadth and depth of the greatest conflicts in the 20th Century (especially as regards Europe, Africa and the Middle East), you must.

Don't let ornery (usually male) critics tell you she can't write or she writes too much or whatever.  They Are Wrong.  That's all there is to it.  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.  She writes in a way that allows her to say what she needs to say and how she needs to say it.  If there were no Doris Lessing, there would be no room in publishing/media for Lena Dunham or Mary Karr or Joan Didion or Margaret Atwood…the list of her descendants is long…So, respect.  A life well lived for which we are all better off because she so lived it.

What a great day at Housing Works Bookstore & Brecht Forum

This evening I had the deep privilege of sitting in front of one of my literary heros, Mary Karr (apologies to you who have been reading this blog and having to hear me babble on and on about her over and over again, but I've read all 3 of her books in about a month, so I can't help it), and hearing her and some other folks, including a Twitter hero (is that possible, I guess so) David Carr (@carr2n)  talk about their experiences with addiction, recovery and writing.

One of the authors on the panel drove me almost to distraction. I will leave out her name, but her one comment that almost drew some fire from fellow panelists, but didn't because they all have way too much time in recovery.  I watched them as a group inhale, breathe out and decide not to say anything - kind of a collective response.  If you've spent times in rooms where this is necessary due to the structure that allows people to speak without interruption, you will understand what I mean.  She said, basically, that the last 200+ inventions of any use in recent history were "all made by us" (that would be Americans) and that "capitalism and art are a great combination!" (exclamation point hers)  At moments like that, I think: (a) you need to get out more - like out of This Country and (b) no wonder everyone else hates us (Americans)!  Oh and just for the final idiocy, we were there in Housing Works Cafe, which is there to help people with HIV/AIDS who are/were homeless.  She also said - and this didn't surprise me one bit - that "I don't go to meetings anymore" in a tone which implied she didn't need them - hmmm),  But OK, she - happily - was the aberration.

Everyone else was great.

I already expected Mary Karr to be great, and happily she did not disappoint.  She is as beautiful, funny and direct as her writing would lead you to expect.  She is engaged to be married at age 57 (big shiny diamond - I'm not making this up), which means at 48 I'm not dead yet - always good to know.  When I handed her the printed out version of an email I had sent her, she was entirely gracious and lovely about it.

More importantly, ehat I learned from her in the panel discussion is yes it's possible to talk about all this stuff honestly without breaking principles of anonymity, yes it's safer to be out there in the world with your story told than keeping secrets and yes (all agreed on this) it's not about 'self-expression' but about telling a story of transformation - not about how horrible someone else was or what happened but how the individual (memoirist or in a novel) overcomes something about her or himself.  This is so basic, I don't think I ever considered it, which is embarrassing: the blindingly obvious being quite literally blinding  So, I'm glad I could hear that.

Listening to David Carr (a reporter for the New York Times) talking about his memoir, I was astonished at what he went through to do it - asking everyone he knew to basically tell him all the asshole things he did when he was drinking and drugging - treating his own (self described as horrendous) behaviour like a news story and reporting it.  The best (most incredible unreliable narrator) story was how he remembered a situation where he had somehow assaulted a friend of his - maybe by accident with a car, I can't remember that part (and I just heard this story an hour ago...so there you go...) and he went to his place and his friend asked him to leave, waving a gun, saying he was too scared of him now.  The friend told Carr, yeah that all happened: except you had the gun.  Carr was astonished, as he thought he hated guns.  Then yet another friend confirmed that he had a Smith & Wesson in his house when he'd helped move him at one point and wondered about why he had a gun. Carr then wrote all this in his memoir entitled, for now obvious reasons The Night of the Gun.  Talk about guts.  Damn.  And he struck me as the most singularly humble person I remember having ever encountered.  I know that sounds extreme, but I've honestly never seen it - not in someone who is speaking in public and could be talking about how great it is he has been redeemed or whatever.

His humility made me fall back in love with Mary Karr when she said in response to Carr's off-hand remark that when Bill O'Reilly doesn't like what he says, he'll accuse him of being a crack addict, but that at least that's actually true....and anyway, that's the most interesting part of my life..."Oh bullshit David, that's the least interesting part of you."  She meant this in a loving way, and it was gorgeous to see.

I didn't drool in front of anyone, and for that alone I am grateful.  I felt I deserved my seat and that I could talk to these folks without fear, which is a new experience.  I also rediscovered another obvious thing: I find it easier to talk with people who are clean and sober than drunk and stoned.  Shock.

Before that Rik, the director of the reading of We live in financial times, and I had fun working out all the technical stuff for the staged reading this weekend at Brecht Forum.   The Occupy Wall Street folks were having their general assembly in the space at 7pm, so we're obviously in the right place.  If you haven't been to Brecht Forum, I do recommend checking it out.  There seems to be all kinds of good stuff happening there, that is if you like your art and politics radical.

Having said that, let me assure you if you are coming to see the play, it is not agit prop didactic. I believe it's more complex than that - and with any luck will inspire a real conversation between bankers and OWS (who will be part of talk-back after the readings).  That is probably wildly optimistic, but is my desire.

It's incredibly cold today, but that kind of makes me feel better - like I'm in the right season.  I also love the coat I bought up in Maine, which is like wearing a big comforter (British: duvet).  There's nothing quite as satisfying is feeling how cold it is, but being warm.

Yesterday spent the Whole Day aside from a small break for a meeting and about 15 minutes of yoga, sending invites out for the upcoming readings.  So, like, if you're reading this and in NYC, please come along!  It's gonna be interesting...

OK, now time for yoga and chilling out time...

Snapshots in the Subway & Stupid Love

As you can see from the time of this post, I am back on my late night train...of thought, action and just well, everything...

Have spent the past few days reading yet another brilliant book by Mary Karr Cherry, which details with excruciating brilliance and precision what it's like to go through junior high-school and high-school when you're smart, from an alcoholic family, rebellious by nature and its the 1970s in an oil refinery town in Texas.  Read it, just do it.  She's got the depth of Salinger without an ounce of privilege, except, as she admits, being white and knowing she was smart enough to get the fuck out.  Which, thank the gods, she did...She's my kinda writer - still in awe.

But what got me to the computer this late was a memory of what I wanted to write about but had forgotten - the walk tonight through the subway tunnel that links  the 123 train to the L train on 14th Street in which I heard the sound of the violin playing, an atonal violin concerto of some type - classical, difficult and looked up to see a very hip, young African American fellow playing.  I smiled up at him and he smiled back - don't know if I make this shit up or not, but it felt like the smile of mutual recognition - as in yes I hear what you are doing and yes I can see you do kinda thing.  So I'm thinking, ah yes, this is why I love NYC.  Then I get closer to the self-proclaimed (in handwriting that can only be done by the insane - precise, too large, somehow too deliberate and yet clumsy) NY Times Published Poet.  He's written this on frayed cardboard pieces in which he also writes that he will write poems for you.  He is asleep in the corner, I am fairly certain this is where he lives.  And I think - right and this is what I hate about NYC.  Not that this fellow is a self-proclaimed genius poet and clearly not sane in any way we could normally recognize, but because he lives in the subway tunnel.  That's the problem I've got with NYC/USA in general.  Call me old fashioned, but I'd rather see people with not enough money for crazy rents and no way to generate income housed.  Call me a Communist even, I don't fucking care.  The virtual (in comparison to NYC) absence of homeless people in London shows you too can have a ruthlessly capitalist city AND house people.  Shock.  Learn from it, people.

OK, but then I keep walking and get onto the subway platform where some folks I can't see are playing percussion, perhaps homemade instruments, not sure - but it's the rhythm, the rhythm of New York, the one you can always dance to whether someone's drumming or not, but that seems to cause a kind of rhythmic beat to emanate from underneath the electric, gas, cable, water, wires, tunnels, subway lines pulsing continuously so that sometimes it seems everyone's tapping, moving, whistling...sometimes crazy, sometimes angry, sometimes wildly generous, sometimes kissing passionately but always moving, moving, moving and then, just as suddenly still - profoundly still and silent.  For a moment - then the movement begins again.  This rhythm is profligate and can't be captured, and it doesn't seem to happen anywhere else, not anywhere I've been anyway - and in the past decade - I've been an awful lot of places.

And so even though I'm terrified about not having health care and sometimes think I've lost it having wilfully returned to Camp God (see in re Republican primaries), there are these moments, too.  So by the time I'm at a meeting talking to some folks who are welcoming me back home and they ask me: did you love living in London, I say the truth: no, no I did not love London.  I love New York.

God/dess and all Her Creation help me.  You are my only health insurance now.

Yoga, High Line & Invitation

Last night did some yoga - not in class but at home with guidance via the miracle of modern technology, this new fangled internet thing.  That just undercut all the gremlins that were snapping like little rat-tail vipers in my head...ok so that's a weird image but you get the point.

Today I got up feeling surprisingly chipper and decided the best use of the afternoon with my friend Christian would be to walk the Highline - which if you haven't done it yet is kind of great.  It's old above ground train tracks that had lay abandoned above the meat-packing district on the far West side of NYC.  They were renovated to include park-ish space, including a mixture of plants natural to the old track area and some new growth, a walkway, benches and public art that gives public art a good name - not always easy - and is inspiring lots of interesting architecture in its wake.  Some of it is just self-conscious but some is actually quite beautiful.  One of the best views was down into a structure that looked like a giant white gauze geodesic dome/airplane hangar that was functioning as a trapeze artist's practice facility - seeing people - from our perch view above the structure hopping up and down on trapeze devices, falling on nets and hurling themselves around in the twilight was quite spectacular.

I don't have a photo of that, but got an OK photo with my phone-camera of the walk as twilight began:

this gives you some idea but building at end was pink from sun

you can see track and how plant life is both 'native' and sculptured - building is seminary

I also watched the clouds, which were broken into little diamond-like pieces move in perfect formation slowly across the sky.  Nice.

The last few days I have been engaged in and tonight (while eating my single person's idea of health food, what I have dubbed this evening Kalfredo - which is actually quite good, namely gluten-free pasta with Newman's own Alfredo sauce mixed together with steamed kale) just finished Mary Karr's Lit.  This line, near the end of the book gives an example of why I think her writing is so fine, both in terms of form and content. "When you've been hurt enough as a kid (maybe at any age), it's like you have a trick knee.  Most of your life, you can function like an adult, but add in the right portions of sleeplessness and stress and grief, and the hurt, defeated self can bloom in place."

Yeah, it can and does.  Her ability to track her descent into alcoholism, recovery and extraordinary spiritual journey but also remain grounded in the muckier details of life instead of the we all lived happier ever after version is lovely.  She is clearly someone with sober time under her belt.  Also, and this is the most astonishing feat of all, she explain with crystal clarity how she went from being an atheist to being a Catholic.  She is as surprised as anyone else by this conversion and her description of the experiences, thoughts and discussions that led to this - mostly instigated by her young son's spiritual curiosity but then confirmed by running into a series of well-spoken, devout religious people, some of whom she already knew, is done so well that I didn't feel like I had to spit while reading it.

Her experiences with some of her mentors reminded me of the Catholic hospital where my father died two years ago, how amazing the nurses - who may have been nuns and/or brothers I don't know but for whatever reason they all seemed to have some kind of numinous aura grounded in the very real, human muck of an ICU - how they fought the evil Kaiser Permanente insurers to keep him there rather than moving him to Kaiser's crappy hospital, which was an insane request for the last day of a man's life - especially as he was there because Kaiser sent him home after his first heart attack with some Tylenol so he had to get in an ambulance to bring him to this onc, which was closer to his house - how these nurses were so kind to me who was sitting there alone - staring at a shell of a person being kept alive by various tubes and breathing machines - not so much human as like a floppy toy in pain.  The Scottish nurse brought me coffee, the South African nurse helped me understand the direness of the situation, so that through my jet lagged eyes I could see what needed to happen.  But also, astonishingly, just sit there for hours and hours watching him, watching all my anger and resentment lift, watch myself have patience and not have to rush, be able to cope with his partner when she did show up many hours later in her grief and confusion struggling as she does with her own issues, which are many - to let him ago.  Again.  The details they thought through: the aromatherapy cream - lavender, the hand made pillow cases for his head as he was passing when the machines were taken off - the plaster cast of his hand - the soothing voices.  The fact that as she did all this, the South African nurse was softlyy crying.  And I thought - oh my God, does she cry all day?  But it wasn't intrusive, it was compassionate.  And the crucifixes everywhere were not grossing me out.  The way this same nurse came up to me when we were leaving and said: you handled this so well.  It made me cry.  If I hadn't been sober for 23 years, meditated every day for 15 and prayed almost continually (silently) like all day, that would not have been the case.

No, I'm not Catholic and doubt I ever will be what the Pope issue and all, but the fact is I saw something I'd never seen before: the good side of Catholicism in action - devout people acting as they believed.  I'm also not saying secular people can't do that, of course they can - it was just this extra that was there at that time.

Karr's book brought that back.  Something about the humanity of it all - weirdly enough.  There is something blood and guts about Catholicism, it's true, that the various varieties of Protestantism I was haphazardly exposed to can sometimes skirt around.

I wrote Karr an abject fan letter earlier this evening - for so many reasons.  I imagine it will end up on a heap many feet tall and that's just fine.  She deserves it.  Do I envy her a little bit for nailing it so beautifully and so well, oh you bet I do, but begrudge her one tiny bit of the praise and support she has received, not a bit of it.  She's showing me how it's done.  I hope I can take the lessons, they are profound and it's not just about the writing.

So my gratitude today goes to the city of NYC for showing me its beauty tonight from the Highline, to my friend Christian for being a rock solid friend for so many years - since before I ever started the recovery process - and who has seen me now through two marriages - God help him - and our various spiritual and artistic quests, to Mary Karr who I've never met but has given me profound hope and even joy and to all of the (presumably) crazy ascetics who invented yoga, my deepest thanks.

I have had over the past few days begun missing aspects of the UK, which does not surprise me - what originally surprised me was the fact I wasn't missing them at first.  One of those things - which I was reminded of watching Downton Abbey (we just started watching series 2 over here British friends - and I wish you all in the UK could see how we lap it up over here - it's hilarious) - namely, the lack of desire to spew out everything about everything all the time and the ability for people to get things with a raise of the eyebrow.  Now, the fact I am writing this blog, which is so exposing and writing that I miss that level of reticence at the same time is truly absurd, but it's also true, so go figure.  Lord knows, I can't.  This same show, which kind of creeped me out when I was in the UK, I find charming when here.  Joseph Albers was right about more than just color.  You put the same thing in a different context and it changes - just like that.

I've also been overwhelmed recently by the provincialism of the US and even NYC - especially its triumphalism and the constant we are the greatest drum beat.  It is kind of embarrassing.  I think the fact the Republican primaries are now in full gear doesn't help.  But also, and this is what I remember being guilty of myself, the voices of the left/dissent that speaks in a way that implies the US is the Worst place in the world.  In other words, whatever it is, it has to be the -est of it...Worst-est, Best, Biggest, Stupidest, Smartest...whatever.  It's like a whole country built on the piece of shit the world revolves around complex of the average alcoholic.

It's still home, though, for better or for worse...but, as I suspected I would discover when I came back, I've been in the UK for eight years, too, and I'm not just an American anymore either.  I did write about this earlier in October, I'm now remembering...it's funny writing a daily blog, because I'll write about something like it's an original thought (of mine I mean - not original in the World) and then remember mid-typing - oh no, I already said that last month.

I'm keeping this in though, for a couple reasons - so I can see my repetitions but also because I know folks keep picking up this blog midstream.

Speaking of which: thanks again to all of you who read from all the many, many countries where you live.  I wish I knew who you were.  I can see from the statistics your numbers are growing, which is heartening.  I know sometimes the comments section doesn't work properly but then it rights itself - so please feel free to comment and let me know who you are, what you think of this crazy thing and all like that...

Oh and I should mention for anyone in NYC, there will be a staged reading of We live in financial times at The Brecht Forum in the West Village at 7:30pm on January 20 & 21.  Below is the official invite.  I am not on Facebook, so if you are interested in helping me publicize this event, please feel free to lift the invite off of this post and paste it on your Facebook page.  It should be an interesting two evenings, especially as it will feature a talk back with people from Occupy Wall Street and people from the banking industry.  Should be quite a conversation.

Invite starts here:

We live in financial times, Part 1: Blackberry Curve 

by Julia Lee Barclay

director: Rik Walter

performers:

Marietta Hedges*

Matt Higgins

Terry Runnels

Kevin Scott

Alyssa Simon*

at 

The Brecht Forum

451 West Street (Bank & Bethune)

January 20 & 21

7:30pm

(includes talk-back with speakers from OWS and banking industry - should be a rollicking good time!)

Who's laughing now? 

We live in financial times, Part 1: Blackberry Curve is a darkly funny theatrical shell game wherein the conventions of character and story (in the form of Mike and James, investment bankers alone with an angry female voice they do not understand) collapse and attempt to frantically reassemble.  Global capitalism as tragic farce.

Want reservations?  Sure you do!  

You can reserve directly through Brecht Forum at: 

https://brechtforum.org/civicrm/event/info?id=12129&reset=1 (for Friday, January 20)

https://brechtforum.org/civicrm/event/info?id=12130&reset=1 (for Saturday, January 21)

If you can pay something, we are grateful, as it benefits The Brecht Forum and Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory, who have donated space and time, and the artists, all of whom are volunteering their time. 

If, however, you are in the industry or need a comp for any reason, please RSVP at ftreservations@gmail.com with your name and affiliation (union, theater, freelance, whatever...).  Your reservation is confirmed unless you hear back from us.  If you cannot make it, please do get in touch, as we have limited seating each night.

The Brecht Forum, founded in 1975, is an independent educational and cultural institution serving New York's broad left and progressive communities. Throughout the year, the Brecht Forum offers a wide-ranging program of classes, public lectures and seminars, art exhibitions, performances, popular education workshops, and language classes. Some affiliated projects include the Institute for Popular Education, founded in 1990 in collaboration with the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory; and Arts at the Brecht, which includes ongoing arts programming in collaboration with such projects as Neues Kabarett, an experimental jazz series initiated in 1998, Strike Anywhere Theater Ensemble, and Red Channels, a radical media collective.


The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB) was founded in 1990 and is the oldest group in the United States offering facilitation training in the techniques of Theater of the Oppressed, a methodology created in the 1960s and 1970s by Brazilian director Augusto Boal, with whom TOPLAB facilitators enjoyed a close collaboration and working relationship until his death in 2009.

*appearing courtesy AEA

Here comes the rain again...

Yeah I know it's a line from the Eurythmics, which dates me as ancient ...

I came home, put on some music, Vivaldi - that innocuous - lay down on the rug and started crying.  I hate music right now.  Whenever I put it on, I cry, because it puts me in touch with the dreaded emotions. The second anniversary of my father's death is coming up on Saturday...quickly followed by the day B and I got together for the first time and of course now he's gone.  So, it just sucks.

At first I thought the emotional weight was more about the separation, but that's not true at all - it's more about my father.  Or both, or like who cares...it sucks.

I don't know what to do on Saturday.  I asked a friend to spend the day with me, we'll see if that's possible.  I hate asking things like that of people, but I did it - by email.  OK, not the best way but the best I could do.  I'm not on my way up to Kripalu like I'd hoped, because right now I fear it's too expensive plus I am sick to death of traveling.

Weirdly enough last night while I stared at the idiot Iowa Caucus, a whole corner of my neighborhood burned down, literally 2 blocks away - which included my local pet food store, laundromat, bank, hardware store and yoga studio.  All of it - gone in a huge blaze.  It's sad to see so many small business (aside from the bank) wiped out.  Plus on a purely selfish level disorienting - where should I bring my laundry now, buy my cat food, do yoga and find a place to get money and deposit it...of course it being NYC these questions can be answered relatively easily and will only involve walking a few more blocks here or there, but still it's just so odd.

Going to my writer's meeting tonight, the train stopped because there was 'a person on the tracks' - I don't know if that's the equivalent of the London tube 'person under a train' announcement (which was announced with disturbing regularity I should add), but right after seeing the burnt out skeleton of a corner of a city block, it wasn't the thing you want to hear.

On the bright side, I'm reading Mary Karr's Lit, which just gets better by the page.  I am both energized, inspired and somewhat envious reading it.  Envious of her ability to talk about her chaotic life so beautifully and sharply, thanks to her poet's ear, lack of self-pity and giant soulful  heart and also relevant to the dead father thing - the fact she had a meaningful relationship with her biological father - instead of having to sort through a variety pack with the original variety missing, except as a vapour trail.  Her father was a stone alcoholic so I'm not talking about hearts and flowers, but it was a real relationship and with my father that never happened.  I chased after him as a child without much luck.  He made some attempts to connect with me - sort of - when I was an adult, which I batted away, angry at that point.  Then just when we were trying to connect, he had a stroke and couldn't talk, then when he could he was aphasic and I later found was getting high throughout the whole supposed recovery process, so like that couldn't help matters.  Pot heads.  I am sorry if you are reading this and like pot, I fucking hate what it does to people over the long term.  It makes people recede, gradually, so slowly it's like trying to watch the earth turn, but just as inexorably, it does turn and the person is gone, gone, gone....Like my father, like so many people.

I know it's fashionable these days to say marijuana is so great and it's a medical thing and blah blah blah but I say bullshit.  I've seen it slowly destroy so many people, including, obviously, my father.  Alcohol is just as bad, if not arguably worse and certainly messier, but I don't hold with the idea it's healthier or innocuous.  Maybe there are people who can smoke pot the way those of you who can have a social drink do that and if so, hooray for you.  But I've seen too much damage people...believe me, I know what I'm talking about here.

And of course I'm angry about that because the sadness and the loss is just unbearable.  Un-fucking-bearable.  To have not had a father and then watch him die is just horrendous.  I'm not the first and won't be the last and I'm lucky I suppose to have had any relationship with him at all, but there are other things, too, that are even harder to talk about and perhaps won't be spoken of on this blog.  But it's not pretty, I'll leave it there and let you fill in your own blanks.

I've forgiven him, that was the gift I was given by showing up at the hospital.  I wrote about that last year and the story of that has been published in a collection, which when I receive a copy of it, will tell you where you can get it if you're interested.  But after forgiving him, all the suppressed emotions came pouring out, having been frozen as resentment in some nuclear bunker of dissociative lock-down...so when the forgiveness came, next were the tears and the rage and the nausea and the fears of certain kinds of weird things I can't bring myself to talk about yet publicly and damn it was hard...and led probably to the end of my marriage as all this came tumbling out and I went from Julia-light to Julia-full on...not exactly what B had signed up for.  That makes me very sad, too.  To think that 'all of me' is a problem or too much for someone, etc.  Another motivator that got me back to NYC.  The place where no one can be too much of anything.  Thank Christ and All of Her/His Disciples for that.

So, for better or for fucking worse, I am fully accounted for now.  And to some people that's a good thing and to some people it's a scary thing and you know what, I just don't have the time for people who are scared by me anymore.  It's just so boring and kind of sad.  I mean I'm not scary.  I may be strong sometimes, crumple sometimes, be needy sometimes, be self-sufficient other times, have a sense of humor and sometimes deploy sarcasm (shock!) and even - gasp - use big words, but like who cares?  If I was male, none of this would even be the teeny tiniest issue.  I don't know why it's taken me so many years on this planet to truly hip to the level of molecular sexism on the planet, but damn it's dull and frustrating and just kind of Exhausting to deal with - ya know?  I'm not blaming all men for this and I know women, too, who are misogynist, but damn when can we finally shitcan this bullshit?  It is so last millennium...and the one before that...and the one before....

So to end on a positive note about my father in regards to this - the little time we did spend together when I was young, he taught me chess, gave me model battleships and chemistry sets, took me to art and science museums and never, ever told me I couldn't do something because I was a girl.  The only sexism I ever encountered within my family was reverse sexism when my grandmother Jani got angry at me for dropping trigonometry because she thought I should be a physicist, since there weren't enough female physicists.

Arguably, I suppose, no one gave me 'girl' training.  And maybe that was a good thing.  Though I suppose some would argue it wouldn't have hurt to 'embrace my femininity' or whatever...not sure that would have helped much.  But looking back at clothes I wore as a young adult, especially when with my first husband, I kind of wish I hadn't dressed with the moral equivalent of sack cloth.  There are reasons for that, but it's sad to see - no celebration or awareness of my body at all...It's been such a painful journey to embrace my physical self - with steps forward and back and all around the track...

So much loss, so little joy.  I have to believe that is changing now.  I really hope so.  After the rain, generally sun...and fresher air.  No guarantee the rain doesn't return of course, but nor do I have to drown in it.  But accept it, I must.  However, it's nice to be back in a physical climate where the rain does not come all the time...

Grateful for the heat in my apartment now as it's bitterly cold outside, but so toasty inside between that and the lovely coat I bought on super-sale in Maine, I'm good.  Grateful, too, for enough money for food, clothing, rent and the love from good friends and family.  Grateful, too, to be home, where I can't be too much of anything, even if sometimes I miss the real live social safety net of UK, which believe me I do...still, for now, I'm supposed to be here.  God/dess help me.  (And no, I don't mean Rick Santorum)

Strange days

I am still going to bed late and getting up late, which used to be my schedule but hasn't been for a while so feeling a bit discombobulated.  Did my writing first again today, which is good news.  However, it's the horrendous editing bit so is about as much fun as splitting rocks.  It's a short story I wrote, edited and sent out and know in my heart of hearts is too bloated so paring it down to re-send out.  I don't know why I should be doing this now, but so far that feels right.  Really want to be working on first draft of grandmother book, and will get to that but know I need to work on my editing chops...so wish me luck.

About to listen to Joan Didion on WNYC, so maybe will learn something - again - from the master.  Speaking of which, I'm reading Mary Karr's Lit now and damn that woman can write.  But it's more than that, there's soul, too and stuff I can basically understand in terms of coming to Ivy League-like places from white trash type places - along with the psychosis of having a mother who wants her to succeed and felt trapped in Texas.  I gave this book to many people over Christmas, for good reason.  Her story resonates with so many of us...too many of us, but that's OK.  At least she wrote it.  No small thing.

Didion is talking about Blue Nights, her book about her daughter's death.  She says it is not a narrative but more a meditation, a reflection.  Her brutal honesty with herself is always astonishing to hear and gives me courage.  These two magnificent women make me feel what I am attempting is possible, even if I'm not sure precisely how I will pull it off on my end.  So, thanks Mary Karr and Joan Didion, once again for showing us how it's done.

Saw two friends from college, Bennett - who is visiting from LA - and Cobina - who lives in NYC but because we both teach can't ever find time to see each other during school term.  We were all directors and now two of us write and teach/make theater and Bennett makes work and is a creative director at an e-card company.  Tonight we were at Cobina's house with her extraordinarily precocious children and lovely husband.  I see through their teenage eyes how much older we are now. But somehow it doesn't bother me, because when I meet kids like this who are so great, I feel that all is well with the world somehow and perhaps our generation at the very least is doing a pretty good job as parents.  The funny thing was reminiscing about times we spent together 25 or so years ago in front of the teens, knowing they must have been rolling their eyes internally (too polite to show it of course), though they did seem interested, too.  They adore 'uncle Ben' who is quite entertaining (and is Sister Unity Divine as a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence in LA but wears LL Bean clothes on most days...but never stops being fun and wildly-kid-friendly - that is if you have been raised to be queer-friendly, which they have...so that was nice to see, too - a new generation not freaked out by gay people - hooray!)

However, sometimes (not tonight but at other times) I will see a particularly cute small person, like at St Marks last night and just start crying, because if I had not miscarried I would have a 4 year old right now, and sometimes that just hits me full force.  I never know when this will happen.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to let that one go entirely.  I feel better around kids now than I ever did, though, and I am glad of this.  I suppose I'll just be whacky aunt/friend Julia...not to mention the teaching...but sometimes I'll be honest it makes me really sad that it doesn't look I'll ever get to be a parent.

Speaking of which, below is a full picture of Ugo the Rescue Cat (and substitute child/boyfriend - yes it is that sad).  I managed to transfer this picture from my phone to computer.  Hopefully you can see how lovely he is.

OK, so why did I title this post strange days?  Because they are strange.  My last post was picked up by Poetry Project and others, so many people looking at it.  Glad there is so much interest in Jonas Mekas, that is heartening.

The anniversary of my father's death is coming up and I find myself noting the age of many of these folks (poets, writers, artists), and so many, like Joan Didion who is 75 and Jonas Mekas who is older, are in the same age-range as my father if he had not died.  He also loved avant-garde artists and writers, so I get these emotional twinges seeing these people who are also ageing - but also have a body of recognized work...and wishing, wishing, wishing my father had stuck with his artistic work rather than frittering his talents and energies away on pot, drinking and taking self-righteous stances against this and that.  But that in the end is crazy-judgemental of me, because I was not him and his journals I have read like a litany of confusion and pain.

I think this desire is partially my own pride.  I wish I had had a father I could look up to or rely on or something.  He wasn't a bad man but he just couldn't do anything really or commit to anything or anyone, not really, and that just seems so profoundly sad.

So as this anniversary is arriving - on January 7 - I find myself still not sure what to do but don't want to do what I did last time, which was work myself silly through it.

There are lots of practical things I need to get done and find I have zero motivation for any of them so am torn between the "just get your ass in gear" voice and the "rest - you're exhausted" voice.  I also need to be working my body more, that I know.  By that I mean yoga and stuff, not horrible driven stuff.

Weirder still, my downstairs neighbour is alternating between coughing loudly in a way that indicates he has some kind of chronic condition and singing drunkenly.  When did I get cast in a Tennessee Williams play?

I think the temporary answer to the do/rest conundrum is to wrap up this post and go to sleep earlier than last night.  Ugo is resting finally having had a case of the cat-crazies, so perhaps I should take his lead...

"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.