Girls, from journal 8/19/14-8/20/14

Dream that one of my uncles commits suicide in front of me.  We're in a green room, open windows, green carpet, standing semi-circle in a tiny room around a pulpit.  He says something I didn't pay attention to, pulls out an oily black pistol.

Now we are all paying attention.  This is the family on my father's side.  I'm there on a road trip, just driving through. This uncle, I'll call him Sammy, he's always lived at home.  He has a clubfoot, is a little slow, and he and my grandmother have always taken care of one another.  He's not easy to talk to, but is a kind person, always happy to just be close to people.   

He'd said something to me before pulling out the gun- some sort of strange aside which I couldn't understand- 

and now as the pistol cracks and there is blood, so much blood flooding the green carpet and Sammy is suddenly dead on the ground, and I'm weeping, I realize his words were a test.  Somehow I realize he had meant to take me with him into death as a favor, but changed his mind because of what I'd said: my thoughtless response.  

I'm terrified, hysterical- this man, this innocent man who none of us thought to notice, all of this time he had been suffering.  Invisible and suffering.

Blood everywhere.  I'm calling my mom over and over, to let her know so she can tell dad.  To warn her that dad might carry the same seed, the same propensity for secret suffering, for suddenly blowing one's brains out onto green carpet-  

I sob and sob and the dream begins again.  Now a memorial for Sammy.  The green and bloody carpet.  Beautiful green light through the windows.  Clergy.  A boy alongside me in the front row won't stop hitting on me- I grab him by the face and tell him to leave me alone so that I can listen, so I can mourn.

I realize young girls are watching me.  After the mass they come up close, frightened but fascinated, and I realize I've made them question their status quo, this room, its resentful & hungry boys.  But I can't stop weeping for Sammy.  Useless weeping; he's gone.  I dream of his suicide over and over  until I finally wake up into sudden hush of morning.  

                                                                               ~o~

Yesterday one of my favorite people was having a shitty day.  

She texts, "Can I bring over a bottle of wine?"  She's one of my most glamorous friends, with a hard-earned serenity. long honey-color hair and a yoga habit, but she's going through a rough patch.  A shitty day at work.  They've been trying to buy a house, but that's like trying to grab fire in this city.  And other stuff.  

I can relate, at least to the 'other stuff'- tell her about something similar that happened to me.  She's visibly relieved.  

"I always start thinking that I am a bad person," she says.  "And I want so much to always have done the right thing.  All we are in the world is the way we respond to things.  Our actions.  I want to be able to be proud of mine."  

"I'm working on this thing now that has a psychiatrist character, so I'm reading all this Jungian stuff.  I've been thinking about symbolism.  For instance- my acne.  It's like my social mask is becoming thin, its cracking.  And you- with the vertigo and everything, it's like you're struggling to regain your balance.  The symbolism in our everyday life, these arcs; you know it would all be obvious if we were reading a biography about someone else, but we're too close to our own lives to pick them out.  The symbolism.  It's something to consider anyway," I say.  "Balance."

Later we are talking about her sweetheart, how she says he has trouble making a decision- "like, he obsesses.  For weeks, Paula!  But then he's fully in.  I mean, it can be a good thing.  Like with me- it took us a while to get fully together, you know.  But now he never questions us.  It's just, it drives me crazy because I can trust myself.  You know?  I trust my decisions; I can make them, boom!" 

"But it doesn't sound like a problem, exactly," I say, "it sounds like he has a different way of being."

She laughs.  "Uff, that is an understatement.  Yeah... but I wonder,you know, I worry for him.  He needs to be more decisive- for his career, if nothing else- and I wonder how I can help him to be more decisive..."

"Let's have a dinner again soon, we can bring it up and let Andrew spout at him," I say, and she laughs.  "But... you know what?  You do have to let him go on his own journey.  He has to make his own revelations.  You can't do any of it for him.  And truly, maybe there's nothing wrong with his way of being.  ... it's old-school in a wonderful way, isn't it?"

"His dad has had the same job his entire life.  Can you imagine?  So I think he's just terrified to commit to the wrong thing, ever.  He's so loyal.  He knows that about himself.  Which is good..."

---

"I had this realization the other day- it is much easier to focus on other people, on helping them with what they need to do, because then it isn't your own soul on the line.  Its so tricky; you need to support one another but also let each other grow in whatever way you need.  You always have to take care of your own journey.  That's so hard to do."

Her eyes water.  She's been giving me advice about platform, about perseverance artistically.  "That's what you can do!  These little nuggets you're telling me.  That thing you said from Thomas Moore earlier- “Failure is a mystery, not a problem-” you should put little stuff like that out there.  It means something to you, it will mean something to others.”

“Yeah.”  I refill our glasses.  

Flies have swarmed the porch, but this is what we do- we always sit on the porch.  We sit in the sunshine with our backs to the street.  Meanwhile Andrew’s Boomchow subscribers keep coming up the driveway and we wave hello, talk to them.  

---

“You know what else you could do, you could utilize Pinterest… I have some authors who make that work.”  She tells me a story about two of her authors who happen to be married, who study the market and self publish, rapidly, accordingly.  "They’re multi-millionaires now," she says.  (She's an author liaison with Amazon.)  “I need to put you in touch with of few of them.  They’re so supportive, they’re such wonderful people.  And they all mentor each other.”

When Andrew & I first moved out to Tucson, I ghost-wrote six books that first year.  You can make a lot of money writing hustle, but it doesn't mean anything.  It’s no different from bar-tending or selling insurance.  Its just that you can do it in your pajamas.  And you cry at night because your wrists ache deep between the bones.  

“God, this is what I need,” she says.  “Sunshine on the porch with my girlfriend.  Ahh!”

It comes out of me.  “I know this will sound crazy, grandiose, whatever.  But the thing is, I was so lost when I was a kid- I know you were, too.  I couldn't see anything about modern society that I wanted to believe in. It all just seemed so materialistic, cyclical. Pointless.  And books were my lifeline.  I have this feeling that really putting myself out there, really exposing myself, is the thing I can give back.  So I can be that to the other people like us.  So they can see that its okay, that these feelings are normal...?  It's what I do, you know, when I connect with someone- I take all my skin off.  

So what I've been doing is- rather, what I was doing- I would post things from my journal onto my blog.  But it’s awful.   Putting everything out there that way.  I dread doing it... I haven't been doing it...”

She smiles  “Do you realize you are already where you are supposed to be?  You are doing it.  It doesn't matter if you've got an agent, a book deal yet: that stuff's arbitrary.  I'm going to give you The War of Art for your birthday.”  Another pour of wine.  "I just told you what I'm getting you, but I'm doing it anyway!"  

We'd started texting earlier because I'd picked up her birthday present.  "I always have to buy Christmas presents late because I'm terrible at waiting to give things to people, hah"

(My friend is a formally trained painter.  I'd heard about her before I met her.  She had a show up at Dusko: sprawling canvases lit with drips and calligraphy-style swirls.  But she hasn't had time to paint lately- difficult to get the materials out, to find the time.)  So I bought her a calligraphy set from Artist & Craftsman, a beautiful journal.  So she can work easily, anywhere.  

Even- especially- when they go to Burning Man this weekend.

Prosecco + me means there wasn't a snowball's chance in South Carolina that I could to wait to give her present to her until her birthday (which was the next day).  We finish the bottle and I bring it out, wrapped up with three tiny singing plastic pigs stuck on top, "for luck," I say, and then, embarrassed, "Also, I gave you two cards because I couldn't decide between them.  Hugs!"

"Oh, I love it!!  I love it!"  She opens the things, pulls out the nibs, grinning.

"You're so loved!"

Wonderful time.  Flies fall in our wine.  We fish them out and play with the tiny pink pigs, and talk and talk.  Hooray for plant-filled porches, and for verbal women, and lovely, chilly, bubbly Prosecco as the afternoon cools around you and turns to dusk.  

Here's to putting it out there.

 

always yes.