In the Name of Writing

 Exploiting yourself in the name of writing (I like the ring to that): not as satisfying as you’d think. As a woman (didn’t think I’d ever use that phrase), I should keep my age and my secrets to moi, but I’m so hopelessly boring that I have to dig up dirt on myself (in lieu of my own psychoanalysis. As my friend Ray would say, “this is going nowhere”). 

My mother called me to ask “you’re not quitting writing, are you?” with the same tone as if she’d asked if I was drinking again (how did my past and present become this diametrically opposed? (Hemingway operated a typewriter and held his liquor quite well)). I hadn’t planned such, but what are plans (? In regard to goals); if you produce no work people may as well assume you’ve hit the bottle again (except in infancy, I never really drank from a bottle per se)…I don’t like being stereotyped, but my little square peg does fit in the little square hole (can a hole be square?), however unique and original I think I am (the trailer park trope is getting so old), a common delusion of drunks (and megalomaniacs); we’re all human (except for the furries), the biggest stereotype there is. 

It’s probably time to type this up on the iPad (boooring), to save this blue rollerball pen for crosswords and see where my klutzy fingers take me (thank god for word prediction). I do consider this a drought that no god and only myself can save me from (though in my Jesus days I put my faith in angels. I still believe in them. And Jesus, whether he was man or god or both. What a sticky situation). I can deal with droughts, I am sober after all and sobriety has its own rain shower of blessings, but I can’t deal with boredom. Sadly.

So I binge watched Mad Men (all eight seasons). In about a week.

And there was a lot of drinking activity I had to watch, which was probably just flat coke or apple juice (so much yummier). Okay. The prevalent and constant smoking didn’t bother me (if you asked me where I live I could say “in a cloud of smoke”), in fact didn’t seem to bother anyone in 1960. So I lit up a cigarette, as I couldn’t make a toast with whiskey, and I didn’t really want to.

Well maybe I did (that’s not the right answer!). But I think (unoriginally), that all that liquor on the rocks, that rotten vegetation we call spirits, is in fact rotten, so rotten it’s poison (why is the word “toxic” in “intoxicated”? Just saying), and if you drink enough of it you will feel rotten too (that night, the next day, and generally over time (ask Don Draper)). But we love it (I did…do?). We love this rotten shit. In the right amounts it is the liquid equivalent to the “alchemy of levity” for our physical selves …maybe even piercing into our souls.

Why do people go so “wrong turn” with it? Why is too much of anything (or even one dose of evil) so tragic?…food, sex, money, power…(many men will not agree with any of those examples)? I don’t know.

God never promised us a rose garden. It’s just not a perfect world (how can anyone be a perfectionist when the next rogue wind will knock down your house of cards?). We should all be warned at birth: this is as good as it gets! (those damn spoiled babies). Perfection is subjective anyways.

But I thought Mad Men was a damn near perfect show (minus all the infidelity), that I’d watch it all over again (and psychoanalyze the hell out of it). I would let it cure my boredom any day (and not because I’m living vicariously. It’s pretty funny, too). 

But I won’t, because I’m too busy exploiting myself in the name of writing. The truth is: I am rotten, spoiled rotten. But more like toxic (just like the alcohol, probably why we were joined in holy matrimony (so go ahead and eat me energy vampires! (I sense an impending phone call from my mother…))).

Don’t take the drought for granted: necessity is the mother of invention.

(“As a woman,” I probably shouldn’t write at all)

(And for the record: there was no rosy glow)



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