From there to here
I started out writing anonymously, with the idea that I would probably write while locked up in the bathroom. It was the only room in which I could shut the door and have some semblance of privacy (most of the time), although that concept didn't last very long, thank goodness, and I am happy that I didn't name the blog the first thing that came to mind, The Bathroom Diaries.
In preparation for a February blogiversary post, I’ve been going through the old stuff, including a file of posts I deleted early on because of their extremely personal, current-at-the-time nature. In the very early days, I wrote candidly about my life. I could do this because nobody was reading and nobody knew who I was anyway. It’s interesting – and sometimes disconcerting – to see the roots of some of my current themes in my early writing, though I have also come a very long way.
For example, here’s something from December 27, 2007: Most of today was spent trying to fight the feeling of being in a mind-numbing life. It's a great psych-out, talking my brain out of its funk, trying to stay in the moment. Lots of internal pep talks. I am no longer totally mired in brain funk, but still struggle with boredom and my self-imposed exile. Four-plus years is way too long to feel that way, but at least things are changing.
Here’s what I wrote on January 16, 2008 on the idea behind writing to survive: Trust me, this is writing to survive. If I don't get it out of my mind via my fingers, I think I would do something really destructive. There is an element of self-censorship to what I write, but that's good. It gives it form and reason.
I’m not sure what I think about this now, as someone who has both been very open on the blog (perhaps too open, especially when it comes to writing about other people) and has also constructed metaphorical frameworks in order to control my emotions and threatening thoughts, posts that attempt to extinguish or at the very least contain my internal fires. Self-censorship is not the right word to describe how I form my version of reality here. Clearly I get something by being open about my feelings, open in this very public context as much as I able to be open, but maybe the rationale for that is an inability to be open elsewhere. And sometimes I obscure my intent with metaphor and walls of words, all written with a compulsion to get them out there, as if I was sending secret messages to an ideal reader.
That post goes on to say: As I was playing with H and C today (H=husband, C=the boy aka child), I reminded myself of how short these days are. C won't be little forever. He won't always want to be with me. He won't remember wanting to rub and kiss my belly. His sweet (albeit repetitive) play will change and he will move on and be an independent creature. He deserves a sense of his inherent worth, not a vague feeling of being inconvenient (oh, I hope I'm not passing that feeling on to him).
There is no danger of the boy forgetting the soothing properties of my belly – he still rubs and kisses it when he needs to be comforted. His play has gotten less repetitive, of course, and I still try to be in the moment with him as much as possible, to remind myself that his childhood is fleeting. And now that I have more personal space – it didn’t exist back then, between the staying at home and the kid who didn’t want to go anywhere and the extended breastfeeding and co-sleeping – I no longer worry about giving him the idea that he is inconvenient.
Over time, larger themes have emerged – guilt, forgiveness, desire, – my voice has become stronger, and my writing has shifted. Certain topics take on the quality of a wave, with the buildup, the crest and trough, sometimes building up again months later (for example, the stillbirth of my first son was a huge topic in late 2008 – early 2009, with intermittent, much less overwrought mentions after that, not that I've dropped it completely). I’m also having fun identifying my favorite posts which, surprisingly, are mainly fictional. For example, Berkeley type still makes me laugh and The Bottom of the Sea, part of the NaNoWriMo novel I wrote in 2009, shows what I can do when I really apply myself. In the process of identifying, of charting the progress of my mind and where I've gotten stuck, as well as seeing how I took something I wanted to do – write – and made it happen, I am better able to evaluate what works and what I must change before another four years slip into memory.
One thing that I can both agree and disagree with now, this sign-off from January 9, 2008: Too self-aware. Damn. And without any prospects. The prospects are out there, but I might need to tone down the self-awareness a bit. Too much can paralyze.
Image: The boy, spring 2008.
Finishing this up as the boy lies sick in the couch across the room, wondering if this post will be of interest to anyone but me. Well, at least I can show that change is possible, and that even without much external change there can be internal shifts. I credit writing and my determination to keep on doing it.
How to survive a bohemian lifestyle
It should have been nothing, just a picture of an evil man holding up a cat, a peevish animal that looked more like a Pomeranian in the early stages of rigor mortis, unnaturally stiff with dull, sunken eyes, than a feline. But behind the man loomed a woman, huge, over six feet tall at least (though the man, kneeling in the middle of a dirt road, was of indeterminate height; perhaps the perspective was off). She leaned over his head, her pendulous breasts forming a cushion, a pillow, behind his thinning scalp. The woman’s body, a blurry backdrop to his, was crawling with tattoos, a fest of fists and skulls and wrinkled barbed wire. She was clearly going through the usual middle-aged skin deterioration. I reflexively ran a hand over my over-tanned arms in solidarity.
He looked as if he were about to lie back and sink his head into her ample chest. I’m not into tit comparisons. I’m fine with what I’ve got. Still, I could imagine the scene afterwards as he jettisoned the cat (maybe it was stuffed?), tossed its stiffened body into the gully by the side of the road, or placed it beside him as though it were “sleeping,” before burying his face in her cleavage. There would be kissing on that road, tumbling in the dust, and all I could see was her face, that fading pixie face, all hidden-eager and faux-tough, and been there, done that and I knew just what she wanted, 25 years after her the first ink job: a punk pregnancy. I could feel the ache, the desire, coming off of her and I wished I could reach out and give her a hug: he’s not worth it, sister. You’re fine on your own. A baby isn’t the only thing that makes life meaningful.
I run a photo blog that’s all about how to survive on bad memories. The pictures aren’t mine. They come from my public. My market research tells me that they’re mainly INFJ neurotics like myself, you know, fucked up, insecure, emotional. What people don't send me: funny pictures of people sleeping with wild animals. What they do send are arty images. Erotic arty. These people are into clowns. They are into daddy-complexes, and sex in the woods (naked ladies sneaking around cabins, sex in cabins with small children present – I don’t post those). But the majority of them are into feet.
We’re not talking hot porn girls with their feet in flip-flops. No, these images come with stories, narratives penned by people with borrowed souls living on borrowed time. Or that’s how one of them described herself, anyway. The feet aren’t just bare, they are bare feet at the airport. In the jungle. Over the edge of a cliff. They’re dirty and in the street. They’re impaling themselves on briars. Or nails. Or thistles. One black and white foot (the ankle so delicate I wanted to snap it in two) was so buried in sludge that the only hint of foot was a patch of painted nail, gleaming and pearlescent in the muck.
I don’t post them all. I bounced the image of bare feet trampling a face, some grimacing man in 80s fashion grandpa pajamas – you could tell from the frayed paisley collar – to the sender, someone whose email address was 12yearoldcodfan@gmail.com (yeah, right). The image was too personal. It brought me back (bad memories, remember? most of my contributors don’t, but I post the stuff anyway). My mom with her gray-white hair, mistaken for my grandmother yet again, my dad in that too-tight shirt, his eyes glassy, with splotches of mud on his cheeks and lower lip – the fissures were just starting to show in the armor of his steely personality.
I don’t like to think about it.
You know why I do this? I want to tear down a wall of feelings. I want to own parts of myself that have been traumatized since childhood. I really don’t give a shit about barefoot freaks or people playing footsie in the bathroom. I am sick of the bun still lifes, of the shoeless men on the corner with their heroin-dark circled eyes. I am through with it all, these photos with their creeping existential soul-crushing dread.
The last picture I post will be of me, a reluctant room mother who plans parties I don’t want to attend. I will pose with my middle finger up, a glass of liquor in the other hand, a handgun tucked into my waistband.
And then I’m quitting my job and going to culinary school.
Image: My feet.
Search terms used (and sometimes adapted): creeping existential soul crushing dread, heroin dark circles, picture of evil man holding cat, 12 year old cod fan, 80’s fashion grandpa pjamas, an animal that is peevish, buns still life, fucked up insecure neurotic emotional, funny pictures of people sleeping with wild animals, fissures were beginning to show in the armor of my steely personality, I quit my job and went to culinary school, infj neurotic, kissing on the road with sleeping, people with borrowed souls, Pomeranian rigor mortis stages, punk pregnancy, clowns weird writing prompts, middle aged skin deterioration, middle finger up wit liquor in the other, mom gray white hair mistaken for grandmother, reluctant room mom parties, naked lady sneaking around cabin, pendulous breast lean over, sex in a small cabin with children present, tit comparisons, “daddy-complex” tumblr topless, how to survive a bohemian lifestyle, how do I tear down a wall of feelings, how to own parts of myself that have been traumatized since childhood/getting whole, how to survive on bad memories, porn hot girls in feet in flipflop, footsie, footsie in the bathroom, barefoot freaks, bare feet at the airport, bare feet jungle, bare feet on concrete, bare feet over edge of cliff, barefoot bed of nails, barefoot dirty feet street, barefoot face trample, barefoot in briars, barefoot in sludge, barefoot on thistles.
Mea culpa, mea culpa
I like to pretend that there are no mistakes, big or otherwise, not because I believe we build our own faults out of the rotten parts of ourselves, or that we somehow court danger, flirt with falling, but because nothing is as simple as just doing something wrong. There are always steps, prior decisions, circumstances.
The circumstances that led me -- no, us, though the boy, who is now a middle-aged man, remains clueless – to my mistake were old and complicated. Maybe it started in a darkened room when I was younger and even more helpless and that defining moment was covered over by confirming experience, the hints at my worthlessness, the attention people paid to appearance versus inner reality, the atmosphere of parental distraction that led to the scene on the bed. From the outside, statistically even, my behavior leading up to this moment and what happened after it were extremely predictable. Can we really call it a big mistake?
Of course, despite my philosophical weaseling out of responsibility (so says the large part of me that wants to pin it on me, for the comfort of control, of being the center), I constantly make mistakes, choose the wrong path, decide to hide when I need to stand up and shout. I see my flaws and how they lead to perdition. If I let myself go down this brittle path of self-hatred, of acknowledgement of fault without forgiveness, without looking at the circumstances and how I got there, I will break into a thousand pieces.
Still. I am sorry to all I have wronged. I am sorry for not being good enough, talkative enough, agile enough, calm enough, kind enough, self-confident enough. I apologize for not getting the cat off the chair more quickly before you collapsed. I apologize for that time when I was twelve and I did something strange to the washer. I apologize for being too quiet at the dinner table, or too full of teenage smolder, or too full of myself. Maybe if I had been better, different, you wouldn’t have died or wanted me out or abandoned me. I am sorry for killing you with anger and selfishness and neglect. I apologize for not talking before things fell apart and for directing the anger of a lifetime at you who were most important to me and to practical strangers, too, the ones who unknowingly probed where it hurt the most.
I am sorry, I am sorry all of you. But there are no mistakes, everything has a context. I promise to let go of my burdens before I burden all of you again, before I cover myself over in never-ending regret.
And now for something completely different, two great things that acknowledge the blog that I have not mentioned, caught up as I am in the Round Robin.
Dieter Moitzi, writer and creative force behind the fine blog confessions of a wannabe writer passed on the Liebster Blog award to writing to survive and a few other blogs he admires. Please check out his blog for the prose and poetry or, even better, take a look at his ebooks. Thank you, Dieter!
writing to survive was listed as number three in a list of the top fifty personal memoir blogs by adulteducationcourse.org. I'm in good company, with fellow blogging friends La Belette Rouge, Elisabeth from Sixth in Line, earth to holly, and Storied Mind. The post highlighted by reviewer Tracy Myers (a name I've gleaned from other awardees) was In My Defense. Thank you very much, Tracy!
*********
From the prompt "A big mistake." My reaction to it was surprisingly dark -- these thoughts are what I have been fighting against daily for months now, trying not to indulge, trying to change the way I react, even when I am not aware of the mechanism or reaction.
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. This one was edited a bit.
Image by Funky64 (www.lucarossato.com).
How to survive at the bottom of the sea
Use your inhaler. Slip out of the house, a messenger bag slung across your chest. Walk, bike, hitchhike to Caffe Trieste in Piedmont, where you'll be another pretty girl with a writing notebook in a room full of chicks in glasses and tattooed men lost in novels and knitting. Write poems on how to be a quiet and thoughtful person. Or pen birching stories of the Victorian or stepmother variety, your characters with naked bottoms poised. For simplicity's sake, make the stories authentic and text only. For variety's sake toss in a few Russians. Or take on the newest craze, flash fiction about hamster birching (remember that hamster punishment DVD you found in your brother's room?). No matter the flavor of your erotic fiction, you can't go wrong if you include someone who gets a thrill from being naked in public, a supine male nude causing model mayhem.
If the birching stories don't work out, make a website because your life is fucked up. Make it a grief blog. Put it on a dark background. Even if you are as lazy as Ludlam's dog, you can still create a fictional character that survives. Write instructions on hiding crack cocaine in a styptic pen. Teach melancholics how to survive. But please don't include pictures of people who barely survive car accidents and, take it from me, nobody wants writing prompts from Nubs the dog.
The café empties out. You don't see the men with tattoos noting their places with bookmarkers and stuffing yarn into tote bags, the chicks in glasses yawning and checking the time. Everyone is anticipating the post-coffee cigarette, the cloak of night air. A man wearing a suit and coffee and cream wingtips hovers over your table. He smiles and reaches out a hand. "Writing to survive? Hi, Jennifer, hope you're well."
Your hand smashed in his, your heart tight, your writing forgotten: He looks familiar, but how does he know your name? Was he the guy at the poetry slam in the city who wrote something nonsensical, something about cha cha gabor's husband gluing his eyes shut? It was social commentary, it was above your head, but the poem did make you laugh, the name like a dance, like a starlet long gone to seed, the hapless husband with his tube of Krazy Glue, the car crash at low speed.
The man sits down. You talk about surviving college as a quiet person, the way you both feel more comfortable with a pen in hand. He compares his writing style to Bertie Wooster's (a reference you don't get: wasn't Bertie Wooster a P.G. Wodehouse character?). Things start to get weird. He gestures to his forehead with two fingers, then whips them to yours, pressing lightly against your brow. "My thoughts get to you," he whispers, leaning close. This clean-cut character suddenly reminds you of a 1950s Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg on weed, actually. He stinks of it.
You start to babble, to make excuses for your quick exit. "You know what Michael Ondaatje said about our stories? That our past is like a villanelle, that we keep returning to it? I'm going to create a blog with romance prompts about car accidents, get people to write of their past traumas, the screech of brakes, the smash of metal, the fluttering of hearts. A type of therapy, right? Just go to, ummm, 'human skull writing.' It's on blogger."
And with that, you are out the door and back into the night.
Search terms used in this post (some modified): birching stories, birched buttock stories, Victorian birching, Amis on insomnia, Jennifer Trinkle arrest, stepmother birching, middle age doldrums, writing grief blogs, writing prompt website with a dark background, Eighties “tall hair” tom waits lyle lovett, “its like a villanelle,” birched buttocks, how to survive liquefaction, poem about a quiet and thoughtful person, Russian birching, the simplicity of childhood, “bertie Wooster” writing style, “my finger” “her divorce,” “my thoughts get to you,”annoying loud night sounds insomnia insects frogs, as lazy as ludlam’s dog, birching naked bottoms,caffee Trieste pretty girl writing notebook piedmont,cha cha gabor husband glues eyes shut, coffee and cream wingtips, Djarum clove cigarette head rush, feeling frumpy mom, fictional character that survives, Ginsberg weed, hamster birching, hamsters DVDs punishment, hiding crack cocaine in styptic pen case, how should melancholics survive, how to be quiet and thoughtful, how to survive at the bottom of the sea, human skull writing, made website because my life is fucked up, male nudes supine model mayhem, “my mother insists on burning candles, ignoring my asthma,” naked public thrill, nubs the dog writing prompts, pictures of people who barely survive car accidents, quiet person survive college, romance writing prompts about car accidents, text only Victorian birching tales, the smell of gin, tight_heart, want to read authentic Victorian punishment stories, writing to survive hi Jennifer hope you’re well
And a "hi" back at you, Vito!
Image by new_sox (modified by me).
Who needs Facebook?
Three minutes ago, I had the thought: I've been Facebook free for 50 hours! Now I could go upstairs and tell my husband that, or mention it to the dog or to Nick the cat who is currently licking his paws next to me while I type. Normally, this is the kind of thing I would mention on Facebook, except that I've pledged to stay off of Facebook for at least another week, preferably two, and it doesn't make much sense to announce how long one has been free of it if one is back on it.
Tonight, when I was cleaning up after dinner (a mixed greens gratin, if you must know, with roasted beets on the side and it was fabulous), I felt like listening to some good sad heart-wrenching music, Melissa Etheridge's first album, the one I listened to on my Walkman, crying all the while, after J broke up with me. This isn't the kind of thing I would normally share on Facebook because I'm kind of embarrassed by it. One doesn't usually announce such things with caveats: Tonight's dishwashing music (blush)! I feel pretty good today and listening to her growl through Like the Way I Do made me laugh with the remembered melodrama. I'm doing fine.
But earlier, when I was cleaning, I was listening to a little Holly Golightly, something low-tech and simple and growly in a different way. Oh, how I ached to show my cool music choices on Facebook. I missed the old crowd, my Facebook friends. I missed knowing there were other people out there poised over their computers or on their phones at the same time as me. Still, I resisted. And still I resist. I can live as though there is no audience, my choices are to please me and me alone. (But I do miss you guys, not because I want to show you how cool I am, but because I enjoy interacting with you.)
So I haven't been able to tell my FB friends about the clairvoyant I saw yesterday and how fabulous I felt afterwards, cleansed, normal, cheery, at home in my own skin again. Not sure how that status statement would go: Chakras cleared, mind freed, it will all be ok? I don't even know how to describe it, but it was good. I am much more at peace.
And I haven't said much about the new blog, how I'm beginning the design process and staring to think of a clever, appropriate name. I have some ideas for the scope of the blog, too, which involves ways of getting out of my comfort zone and writing about it. It's exciting. I'm ready for a change. It may take a few weeks to get it up and running, but it will happen.
So here's a little Holly Golightly for you. Enjoy the coolness.
Image: Facebook, I am not looking at you.
Origin story
The summer of 2007, right before I started the blog, was a terrible time. I missed DC, the ability to get around easily, my friends, the city, the houses, my old neighborhood with its grocery stores and restaurants and easy access to Rock Creek Park. I missed my mother, even though she was somewhat unavailable at the time. My husband was adjusting to a very different work environment, was struggling with identity questions of his own. I had all this bottled up sadness and anger, a story I had held onto for over twenty years. I had a lot to say, but no way to express it.
That's when I started writing, during my son's naps, writing in a notebook out on the deck, writing in the bathroom after I brushed my teeth, writing out what I used to think of as my defining story (maybe it still is, though I don't want to be defined by it). Then came a marital crisis followed by the creation of the blog, the pursuit of readership and other blogs to read, people to connect with. I started writing more, almost every day, and slowly my life changed (as it must: two-year-olds don't last forever, thank god). Through the Writing Salon, I found a writers' group. My son ended up at a wonderful play-based preschool, then started elementary school. The defining story changed, lost some of its significance. Other kinds of stories surfaced, mostly from my childhood and early adulthood, the days of river swimming and fights over dinner tables, of alcohol and tears.
It helps to look back, to see how far I have come, as a writer, as a person, how despite my internal struggles, I am capable of change. We're all capable of change, but sometimes it comes slowly, when we don't even know the wheels are turning.
Thank you for reading, for being witnesses.
Related posts: The end of anonymity, In the beginning . . .
Top image: The boy at almost-three, so cute, so all-encompassing.
Image: Me, sophomore year of high school, at the beginning of the troubles.
Edited on 1/7/11.
The things you seek
- existence spiral
- “her useless foot”
- cocaine Victorian
- “xylitol bad”
- he wears clogs
- hope
- knobby blog
- “chicken necks” Elkton
- “it’s like a villanelle”
- +zipperhead girls legs on the bus
- beautiful hangover
- john lydon’s hair
- It is almost impossible to survive just by wine writing alone!
- am I wasting my life writing fiction
- Talented people coming from disfunctional (sic) childhood
- writing to survive crushes
- am I strong enough to survive prison
- drunken squirrel writing story
- hamster dvd birching as punishment
- eyes melted nuclear bomb
- footsie under the table with friends wife
- pixelated beard
- stepmother birching, victorian birching, birching naked public, birched buttocks, russian birching, turtleneck birching, etc., etc.
- turkeys gobbing (sic)
- man wearing shoes
- songs, songs songs: rip her to shreds, i really didn't know what time it was led, sunshine superman, bongwater free love messes up my life
All of the above (with the exception of "I do it, too," which has examples of some of my recent Google searches) are search terms people have used to get to writing to survive.
Image: Me and the boy at Castello di Amorosa, Thanksgiving weekend
I'm not back yet
But I will be next month.
My mother's visit, followed by the kid's illness, my trip away at the end of this week, and the beginning of the school year are conspiring to keep me from blogging.
Thank you for all your kind words on Zoe and writing, and see you in September!
Images: Top, the Golden Gate bridge from the Marin Headlands. Bottom, trying out some doors at Battery Mendell in the Headlands, where they apparently paint to match the ocean.
Comments, comments and other weirdness
And my colors are all off -- at least for the moment. My apologies for the look of the blog.
Let the volley of comments begin.
;)
Mixed up muddled up shook up world
Now for the grouse-inpiring news: I have to match up each set of Haloscan comments with the proper post, which will mean that I have to go through almost two years worth of saved comments one by one. JS-Echo is still problematic--some people can't comment, there is no easy way for commenters to provide a link back to their web page, and most of my posts still have a double comment link at the bottom. The house needs to be cleaned for the house/pet-sitter. I still need to get a few Christmas presents for my father and stepmother (don't ask). I have been so wrapped up in the commenting problem that I haven't been stopping by many blogs. And even worse, I've barely had time to write or think, since the little brainspace I have has been devoted to blog trouble-shooting.
I hope to get another post out before we leave on Monday, something that will have nothing to do with colors or comments or cats (though I will return to cats). In the meantime, here's a little Kinks for you, the song that I stole a line from to title this post.
Image: Our front fence with plants.
Twenty-four hour party person
With the change, I also implemented a new commenting system, Disqus, in the hopes that some of the issues readers were having with the other system would go away. Unfortunately, it appeared as though the comments I imported into the system were not linking to my posts. I was also not thrilled with the location of the completed comments, which appeared down at the bottom of the page. So I've switched back to JS-Kit Echo, except that as of Monday night all of my old comments were floating around in cyberspace, unattached to the posts that prompted them. I apologize if one of your comments is out there, either from the brief reign of Disqus or the somewhat spotty ongoing commentship of JS-Kit Echo.
Everything else has changed, too though the language has stayed the same for the most part. Take a look around and leave a comment or email me to let me know if something works or doesn't work for you. You might also learn something new about me, discover another reason why I'm here.
So here you go. I hope you like it. I'm sure I'll be tweaking things over the coming weeks.
Image: Big Skully as angel, December 2009.
Edited 22 March to reflect change in commenting interface and to add all sorts of other stuff, too.
Can't comment? Let me know.
About a month ago, Haloscan, the company that provided the commenting interface for this blog, went under and I switched to something call ECHO by JS-Kit.
It isn't working very well. Some people have been unable to comment, either because the commenting box doesn't show up or because they are told that their comments are too long (even though they aren't). Sometimes the comments don't load for a long time, which slows the loading time of the blog.
Unfortunately, the blogging software I use is only compatible with ECHO, but I am actively looking for other platforms that might work. In the meantime, if you would like to comment but can't or have been having problems, please let me know at writingtosurvive(at)gmail.com or fill out my contact me form. I apologize for the hassle and hope that I can come up with a solution quickly, or that the folks at JS-Kit can help.
Image: My mother and me on a non-windy day in December at the Berkeley Marina.
Knobby and the xylitol squirrels
You've got the wrong Jennifer. Or you've got the wrong Fred. You've got the wrong both of us.
George "Knobby" Michael?
You can try to get to this blog directly by searching on just my first and last names, but Google won't send you here. Despite the fact that writing to survive is mine and I have the metadata to prove it, most people who are looking for Jennifer Lastname arrive by way of my guest post at La Belette Rouge or via PublicLiterature.Org. At least Bing puts writing to survive on the first page of results when you search for my name. But the blog itself doesn't have enough Internet power or back links or whatever it takes to convince most search engines that it's mine.
Some people who end up here via Google or Yahoo are looking for information on myelofibrosis. Although I did write a post about Kevin's death from the disease, I want you to know that his ending was dramatic. Atypical. He lived almost ten years after his diagnosis, which is also very unusual for someone who was diagnosed relatively young. Kevin was waiting for a stem cell transplant when things fell apart, which may have saved him, but might have hastened his death, too, if it hadn't been too late anyway. Every time someone lands here looking for information on the disease I feel guilty, since the ending of his story was so idiosyncratic and terrible. It's not like this for everyone. It isn't, really. There's hope.
But at least these searches make some sense, are tied to a particular name or a disease that I discuss in a bit of detail. And the searches for writing prompts or writing to survive have led people to the right place, though I think that the person searching for writing prompt using a toaster really needs to visit one of koe's blogs. Based on the keywords, however, a lot of you who end up here through an Internet search leave disappointed. Writing to survive is a friendly place. I want to answer your questions, want to give you what you seek, so once again, I will attempt to provide clarity, to transmit information.
Yes, this is not a squirrel blog.
Perhaps you were looking for birching stories, or variations on the theme (victorian birching stories, birch corporal punishment, bad boys birching stories). Or you were looking for information -- or something else -- about drunken teenage hookups. One person arrived by searching on the domain name submissivelouise.com. There are no birching stories here, though I did once mention a neighbor's birch tree, and while I took part in more than one drunken teenage hookup back when I was a drunken teenager, I don't tend to write about such things, at least not in the way you might hope. As for submissive Louise, I wrote a brief post about a dog with that name who was not the dominant type.
Some searches are from people looking for answers to matter-of-fact questions: Why is George Michael's nickname Knobby? (Beats me.) Can stork bites spread? (Not the birthmark variety.) How do puffins survive in the cold? (Sweaters and booties.) Can one survive on writing? (Not alone.)
Other queries get me wondering: How did Duran Duran's John Taylor cut his foot in 1984? Was he badly hurt? Was the search on an interesting story about me is i was 8 i was trapped inside of a burning building. it was about 2:00 a.m. when my father smelled smoke in the kitchen a misplaced copy and paste or was this person hoping that someone else in the Interlands had written about his or her private life story? Who "gestures and halts and falls"?
Footsie, neighbor?
I can tell you the good and bad about xylitol. Bad: it can kill your dog, though our dog survived her small exposure. Good: it is low in calories and oh so sweet. Will it make your gerbil listless and cold? Perhaps. But I don't know a thing about xylitol squirrels and this is definitely not a squirrel blog (Or a blog about autodidacticism).
Google leads you here, seekers of information. You are hungry for stories, for hard facts, for the light of knowledge. But once you get here, do you stay? Do you note the address and come back and visit from time to time? Not necessarily. I need better keywords, need to provide the right breadcrumb trail. I need better search engine optimization.
I need clarity.
Confidential to I'm in love with a childhood friend: Most of us have all been through it. Examine your feelings and figure out what's really going on. If it is really love, fess up and get it over with. Good things may happen. Maybe you can become footsie neighbors, or at the very least, you can move on with your life.
Squirrel image from here.
Foot image from here.
Honestly?
So. Gulp. Here I go.
My parents, all gussied up for the 1968 Senior Prom. Oh, if I could only still hold you two responsible for my neurotic ways! Instead, I will use you as photographic filler.
1. I find this task terrifying. Why? On one hand, I am pretty boring. On the other, I have all these worries that I am used to keeping mainly to myself. I am neurotic, for lack of a better term. So I find myself thinking of writing things here like "I am pathetic and antisocial." or "If you met me in the flesh, you'd be questioning whether I was really the person who writes this stuff." OK. Let's just say I'm insecure.
2. To continue in the same vein, now that it is possible that a lot of people from my past, childhood friends, old high school buddies, people who knew me in college, read this blog, I wonder what they think about these stories of mine. Did any of them know this stuff already? Do they look back at me with kindness or do they judge me? I'll never know, so I think I'll go for the kindness angle.
3. I will listen to a song over and over again when I have it stuck in my mind. Recent selections include Finish What You Started, All Come True, Funk #49, and Hot Sauce. Oh, and Ball and Biscuit.
4. While I am a good cook, some might even say a great cook, the only things that my son will eat in my presence are noodles with butter and cheese, packaged macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza crusts, and rice and beans from Chipotle (yes, he even refuses my rice and beans). Pasta with cream sauce? No. Soothing, buttery polenta? I don't think so. Anything with a green fleck or two in it? You must be joking. This would drive anyone crazy, but I had an epiphany the other night about why it was driving me murderously crazy. I have "meal issues," probably from a childhood of bad dinner table experiences, from being made to stand at the table as a three-year-old on a regular basis, to being totally ignored or berated by my former stepfather at mealtime, to finally being rejected as a dinner partner by my mother and Kevin when I was fourteen. My son's unhappiness with my food offerings felt, well, deeply personal. Once I realized this, my irritation level at his dietary preferences went down several notches. Though I still find them maddening.
5. You know that I don't drive, right? But did you also know that I don't bike, skateboard, scoot or Segway? It's a wheel thing, I suppose.
6. I really should be working on my novel. On my good (or is that "crazy"?) days, I have these grandiose notions of the brilliance of my writing. On my bad (or is that "realistic"?) days, I think my writing will never amount to anything. So blogging keeps me going while also distracting me from the larger purpose.
7. I hold on to people in my mind, keep crushes for decades, never really forget a friend, even if I haven’t spoken to them directly since middle school or even earlier. These attachments keep me plugged into the world, gossamer threads from my mind to yours. All it takes is a little tug -- a photo, an email, a similar name -- for me to conjure up the smells, the meal, the pains and joys, that awkward conversation we had fifteen years ago.
8. It could be that three cats, one dog, one child, one husband, a two-story house, and a backyard is too much. So I don't vacuum nearly as often as I should, the toilet needs scrubbing, and I finally stopped watering the impatiens after six months of careful attention.
9. My only regret is that I should have kissed him when I had the chance. Just to get it out of my head. This was years ago, when I was so focused on doing the right thing, on keeping a tenuous hold on my first marriage. But that kiss will never happen and as time goes by, the moment and its importance feel more and more distant. Still, I think about it sometimes and try to console myself with the fact that it would have been destined to end badly and my desire would have gone the way of most, shot through with sadness and regret.
10. I talk to my mother on the phone almost every day. Sometimes more than once a day. I worry about whether this is healthy, not because of our conversations or how I feel afterwards (I feel fine), but mainly because I think it can stand in for interactions with other people, like people on this coast or friends I haven't spoken to in ages. Maybe it gets in the way of potential friendships. Maybe I should pick up the phone and call my father every once in a while. Or maybe I'm just neurotic and worry too much.
There you go. Another morning of novel-writing gone. But this was more fun.
Faking it*
Surely there are hidden meanings everywhere, waiting to be uncovered. This was my hypothesis when I started my latest self-improvement project “Barbara’s Weekly Epiphany.” All I had to do was approach the world with a childlike sense of wonder, to keep my eyes and mind open, maybe even wear my heart on my sleeve. All of that information that has beaded off my consciousness, repelled by my cynical attitude and “been, there, done that” grubby cliché-ridden approach was going to be captured now, in a mind as open as my VW sunroof on a light-pierced June afternoon.
I started a blog about the project, wanting to share my insights with others: epiphanyquota.blogspot.com. First epiphany? You have to sell your ideas, sell yourself, if you want to succeed. You have to believe in you, or no one else will. Second epiphany: fake it ‘til you make it is more true than you think. Third epiphany? In the middle of a crowded public park, if you close your eyes and quiet your thoughts, you will hear the vibration of the world, the sound of its heartbeat.
The blog started getting a fan base, made up mostly of earnest young men drawn by the stock photo I’d put up that looked vaguely like me fifteen years ago. They were drawn by that and the supportive and slightly flirtatious comments I’d left on their own blogs, encouraging observations on the quality of their writing, the strength of narrative voice and character, how close I felt to them though we’d never met. These exchanges led to other epiphanies, ones that I didn’t share on the blog: bullshit actually works; the reality of the online world both mirrors and denies the reality of the solid world; men will believe anything.
One of them -- let's call him Brad, a name that fits in its brevity and practicality, that matches his corny, Hemingwayesque writing style -- got a little too interested. How was I supposed to know that he would take my ego-stroking seriously? I thought I had covered my tracks (always cover your tracks, a too-late epiphany), but somehow he found my phone number. I have an old habit of letting the machine pick up and would stand over it, listening to these silences injected with anticipation, the light touch of breath, the occasional throat-clearing. The messages hovered in the air, sticky and thick, for hours after the caller hung up. Brad eventually told me he was responsible, in an email where he attached a photo of someone, I presume himself, in flagrante. I immediately moved the sordid pic to the trash, changed my number, and blocked his emails. There are some sick fucks out there.
I type this in my ratty old bathrobe, a mangy Pomeranian on my lap. But I could be lying. You never know.
*From a Round Robin prompt last winter ("my latest epiphany"). Every word of this is made up. Really. And I'm all for positive thinking, have spent years faking it and am on the cusp of making it.
Image: "Epiphany," Henry Ascensio. From Tavistock Gallery.
Home is where the guest blogger post is or how La Belette Rouge coaxed me out of my blogging cave
She has also tempted me back to blogging by asking me to write a guest post for her August series on the concept of home. It's a rich topic and I gave it a very writing to survive twist.
My post, Home in objects, is here.
Hanging on a curtain
But that isn't the point of this post. I want to apologize for being an absent presence in the blogging world. I haven't been up to visiting or commenting on blogs. Updating this one has become increasingly time-consuming. Because of the software I use, every time I have a new post I must export the entire blog and then upload it onto a server, a process that take about half an hour or more. It isn't simple or quick. Writing the posts takes a long time, too, sometimes five or six hours. I have limited writing time and have to start pursuing freelance work. There are a few reasons for this, including the fact that my husband is about to take the equivalent of an 8% salary cut through 21 furlough days in the next year. (Ahhh, California!) I would also like to chip away at longer stories and to deepen my writing which just isn't possible in the blog format.
I'll be a more present online presence soon, one way or another. In the meantime, please don't take it personally that I haven't been by. I'm trying to be present in my own life, figuring out a way to get beyond the longing to immerse myself in deep narrative. To move beyond the longing, I have to leap in or give up. I have no intention of giving up.
Image: Rainbow in Berkeley, June 2009.
Making it (slightly less) funky
I was tentative at first, hid myself behind veils and a false name. Over time, the veils slipped away, I walked out from behind the curtain, showed my face to the light, revealed my name and purpose. And being seen is ok. It's good. I want people to know me for who I am, for who I was, to keep the secrets from defining me.
Because the secrets don't define me. Even better, after seeing the light of day, after being transformed into stories, they have become almost irrelevant, forming and transforming experiences, important ones, but not the core of who I am.
Visitors to this Web page, however, may have a different impression. In the interest of shaping writing to survive to better reflect reality and also to bring a more professional feel to the page, I have made a few changes. They're subtle — a new tag line, slightly different selections in Excerpts from Life, a more complete look to the food writing page, which I've renamed Kitchen Detour. Most of the old stuff is still here, stories of angst, secrets revealed, but you have to dig a little deeper to find it.
Next post: Crumbling beneath the Formstone. Or something along those lines, with a departure from post titles derived from pop music.
(Image: Mirror, Little House by Jennifer Trinkle, 1986.)
Not that kind of blog
Back when I was into admiring my own legs. Mirror, Little House, 1986?
I wonder if he (or she: yeah, right!) was disappointed. From a little box on Google or AOL or Yahoo, he typed "she was drunk" naked legs and somehow ended up at writing to survive. Yeah, I've written the sentence she was drunk here once, in one of my short pieces of fiction. Check one. Certainly legs come up somewhere on the blog, perhaps in that same piece, but for sure in Heartbreaker with the line admiring my legs in the dashboard light. Check two. And you might notice a link to Robin Easton's wonderful blog Naked in Eden along the sidebar. Check three.
But did this anonymous surfer, this seeker of information on a drunken woman, perhaps one with naked legs, leave happy?
I'll never know.
What about the Bertie Wooster fan who typed in their hero's name but added an interesting second search term: birching? I have never written about this practice, a form of corporal punishment that involves hitting someone's bare skin (usually the buttocks) with a birch rod, though I have mentioned the Neighbornator's birch tree. Google lumps the blameless tree together with its not-so-innocent use. Combine the search engine's folly with my post on a crush -- I had a nickname for him, a code word really, so that I could write it in my notebooks without fear of discovery. Bertie Wooster. -- and another imprecise conclusion is reached.
There is always an answer, some reason why writing to survive becomes a search result. It's no mystery. You can look at the keywords and the text to figure it out. Still, I have to wonder why some people decide to click on a link to this blog when there are better sources of information out there. For example, yes, Happy Easter the hamster may have been in the early stages of rigor mortis when we found his corpse in the basement, but this doesn't mean that I know anything about the actual process, what the body goes through after death. Inevitably the people searching on how long rigor mortis gerbil and how long does it take until rigor mortis disappears had to move on to more authoritative sources. And, sad soul who turned to the internet to find out whether hamster rat poison survive, I think that the two are a fatal combination, though you have my deepest sympathy. I've been there.
Google searchers, AllTheWeb seekers, AltaVista clickers, I'll never know if you found what you were looking for, if what you sought was on this blog, because you probably didn't leave a comment, just came and skimmed. Most of you left in a hurry, though a few clicked through a page or two. I'd like to know, was it satisfying? Did you leave happy, or did you still feel a yearning for information you didn't receive?
There are stories behind every search. The people who usually end up here are often led by a sense of anxiety, fear, or worry. I'd like to soothe, to provide reassurance. In that spirit, I give you the below list, question and answer, taken from the searches that led people here.
can my relationship survive if I am twenty years her senior?
It depends.
crush on married woman
I'm a married woman who is prone to long term crushes (though I seem to stay away from married men even in my fantasy life). I never expect anyone to have a crush on me. Enjoy the unreality of it all and don't go any further.
dysfunctional families at easter dinner
What makes Easter dinner different from any other dysfunctional family dinner? It will be predictable, probably unpleasant. Prepare yourself.
explain hangover to parents
They've probably experienced a hangover before and know the symptoms, but you can always blame it on a tummy bug. Chances are they will choose to believe you. How old are you, anyway?
My striptease saved my marriage
Is this a hope or a statement of fact? I am doubtful of the ability of striptease to save anyone's marriage.
Bad stepmother blogs
Despite my one post complaining about her (which no longer feels relevant, but served a purpose at the time), I love my stepmother and would never claim that she is bad. Still, I'm sure there are plenty of blogs out there that discuss "bad" stepmothers. This isn't one of them.
Just remember: someone knows what you've been looking for, or at least they know the words you've chosen in an attempt to find it. Luckily, though, they don't know your name. Not yet, anyway.
(For an earlier post on the same topic, see How did you get here?)
Baby, stick around
Thanks to washwords, Koe Whitton-Williams, tricia, Dori, Karen, Bobby Revell, Jennifer D., Melinda, Lorenzo, Candy, Ashe.Selah, lydia, timethief, SmallWorldReads, John Folk-Williams, and Jim for your encouraging words and comments. Your support makes the difference.
Here's a bit of writing inspired by the prompt "Alright, fine. Let's hear your explanation." Well, inspired by that and by reading my grandmother's burn notebooks, written during my grandfather's long hospitalization, where her anger over his vices and infidelities comes through, clear and Mercurochrome-bitter. I couldn't bring myself to change the names; they are too good to be fictional.
I just went to the track to look at the horses, to watch them ripple around the oval, to see their hooves beat the dust into red clouds. But once I got there, the action sucked me in. Before I knew what my feet were doing, I was standing in front of Les’s booth to place my bets. The air was heavy with money and I was feeling lucky. I’d win enough to pay off the rest of Atlee’s mortgage or maybe just enough to buy a smooth fifth of whiskey. Or even score a downpayment on a new washing machine for you, Vi.
Then I ran into Williard, who had a full flask and offered me a swig or three. Maybe the alcohol clouded my judgment. Maybe I couldn't see what an amateur that jockey was, but I think the race was rigged, that somebody paid him out to fall off the horse. Or maybe they slipped the little guy a Mickey, I don’t know. The end result is that I lost. The flask made a few more visits to my lips and I didn’t feel like going home just yet anyways.
You and the girls were at the cottage and I was planning on sleeping at the empty Tuxedo Park house, but then I remembered Molly. Molly with the blonde hair and long legs, Molly from the Tip Top Club in Salem, a nice easy-going girl. The Mustang knew the way from the track to the bar. It’s no coincidence that they call that car a Mustang. It has all the bucking power and smarts of a horse. It knows where to find the watering holes, knows the trail back home, too.
After I left the Tip Top, I was exhausted, so I took a snooze in my ride. That’s where I was last night, sleeping in the Mustang.
You can ask Molly if you don't believe me.
My Free Bird moment is coming
The auditions were on a muggy spring Saturday in 1981. I couldn’t sleep the night before. Nerves. My mother and I walked into a theater smelling of preadolescent sweat, each kid tingling with nervous energy, wondering how they would do on stage. Someone called my name in low, deep voice. I pushed myself up and wobbled down the aisle, a skinny eleven-year-old with long frizzy hair and a preternaturally serious demeanor. At that moment, my mind was dusty as chalk. Up on stage, though, I pulled it together and gave a sufficiently melodramatic reading from Beauty and the Beast. The fall before I'd played the female lead in a children's theater production.
"Beast! Beast! I love you, Beast!" Beauty cries over the dying brute. In the small theater production, the handsome high school boy who played the Beast was made up to look like a proper monster. His delicate Italian features were obscured by a greenish-yellow gelatinous substance, his hair a hawk’s nest of detritus. Whatever was on his cheeks stuck to my lips as I bestowed the chaste kiss that eventually returned him to his princely state. That boy wasn’t on stage with me for the audition, but I faked it well enough. I got my acceptance letter for drama camp six weeks later.
It was the summer I considered myself twelve, in between sixth and seventh grades. The camp was made up of ambitious 11–14 year olds. For two hot July weeks we took acting classes together on the campus of Goucher College, culminating in a production of Free to Be You and Me. Most of my memories are about the dorms, where I discovered a love of dark chocolate, developed an aversion to public showers, and shared giggles with the girl in the next room over. But the main flavor of those two weeks was an overwhelming feeling of awkwardness, a sense of being quiet and overly polite, to the strange boy who pursued me by the salad bar, to the other girls on my floor.
On our last night, the camp counselors put together a dance, the soundtrack heavy on 1970s rock lightly flavored with disco. The evening wrapped up with a final song: Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd. It was the first time I'd heard it. The strange boy found me across the darkened dining hall and held out his hand. We danced close. I felt a longing for what wasn't quite over yet.
In about three weeks, the contract for writing to survive's web hosting is up for renewal. I have decided not to renew (though I am conflicted about this. Is it worth $100/year to keep this blog out there? I'd love your thoughts.) Leaving is scary. In the past year and a half, I've become friends with a few people scattered across the world. This place has been my virtual support system as I grappled with my past and figured out what it means to be a writer. I will miss the conversations with my blogging friends here, but hope to keep on commenting and interacting in the blogosphere. Just because the blog is disappearing doesn’t mean that I am, too.
I haven't quite decided what is next, but I know that I need to devote my energy to writing. That's scary, too, to take it on without the wonderful instant feedback, knowing I'll be alone, typing in my little room, writing stuff that maybe NO ONE WILL EVER READ! But I think that the words will grow in that environment, where it's just me and them, without worries about posting or commenting or dropping zillions of Entrecards.
My Free Bird moment is coming and I'm feeling a bit melancholy about it. Before the last dance however, I'll have a heap of appreciation for the people who have kept me afloat in the blogosphere. If you want to skip out now, that's fine, but I hope you stick around until the end.
March's blog: Dr. Bob's Nightmare
Gabby Hyman, of Dr. Bob's Nightmare
For Ginsberg's was the syncopated flurry of Coltrane, a cool hipster rap sung in crowded bookstore reading rooms thick with tobacco smoke and a counterpoint of cheap Mexican weed. Bad Gerry was sung to Vivaldi played on a sturdy hi-fi set as you gazed out a dormer window across the Monongahela River where black sparrows alit like a puff of factory smoke in a tree laid nude by winter.
-- Gabby Hyman on poet Gerald Stern.
To find out what it means, you have to go back in time, not too far, just to early December of last year. There’s the first post of Gabby Hyman’s unusually-titled blog, Dr. Bob’s Nightmare: So, Why Not Me? Well, maybe the explanation isn’t spelled out for you here, either, in this short piece on Robert Holbrook Smith, aka Dr. Bob, one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, but it gives you a clue, a trail of words to follow. You can reach your own conclusions.
Gabby Hyman is a writer, plain and simple. He’s been a journalist, a professor of English, and a creator of content for various websites. He edits, he ghostwrites. You can download a copy of his book, Knives and Forks and other stories from Literary Road. But Gabby also writes a fantastic blog, a place for stories from aching memory, sometimes wryly funny, always lyrical.
These tales are told with a grace and a stretching language, all metaphor and rich description, but they also keep you going, wondering what happens next. That night that Gabby walks onstage as the Spirit of Christmas Present, does it go as planned? The final analysis may not be what you think. Who is Myoko Sakatani and how did she save his life? Enigmatic titles pull the reader in -- Last of the Mic-Mic Men? -- but Gabby’s fine writing does the rest: "The Beast was the gangsta-earthmother of the drive-by smile. In fact, she changed everything." The Beast? How did she change everything? You must read on.
Some of the stories are about a world about to be transformed, portraits of life in Southern California before the sixties were in full swing, when the bread man still delivered and milk came to box outside your front door. Others are about the immediate aftermath, the awkward mid-70s (Gabby's trip to the 1976 Democratic convention, for example), or his time as a graduate student in Alabama, where football was king. These pieces aren't necessarily nostalgic, but give a sense of the author presenting the past, remembering and working it over in his mind.
Good writing often leaves you with questions, with blanks to fill in. After reading several of Gabby's essays, I want to know more, to figure out how his circuitous path, which included stints in Alaska, Illinois, and Washington state, transpired, whether there was a plan or a pull or if those seemingly peripatetic days were a matter of controlled drifting, a person trying to find his place in the world. I don't mind these lacunae, these mysteries. The questions only make it more interesting.
So go. Read. Let the words pull you in, get you thinking. You'll be glad for it.
While I'm out ...
While I'm away, you might want to check out the back catalog with some of my best work. You wouldn't want to miss stories like All that jazz, Louise Peevish, or Heathen can wait, would you?
Until March (though you might be seeing me around here and there),
Jennifer
February's blog: Revellian Dot Com
Revellian Dot Com: Reader Beware. Some of the time.
I can’t do it.
I can’t possibly sum up Revellian.Com. Even its tag line, Psycho-Linguistical Dialectology: From the Edge, while pithy and funny and in a sense descriptive, doesn’t do blogger Bobby Revell’s work justice.
I could say that one of the hallmarks of Bobby’s blog is his transgressional fiction, dark tales with vivid descriptions and on-the-brink characters oozing bodily fluids and squinting through a lucid haze. These stories may not be for everyone. As I write, the latest post on Revellian.Com is "The Demon Witch: Sexual Psychotropic," with lines like "Undulating intentions as she oozed, sticky slime slug melting atop as we engrafted–merging fluidic flesh. She hungered for my warmth and I for iced mucous–malignant sludge folding into one. Suckling human lozenge." Perhaps this is not your cup of tea (and you have been warned). But even a squeamish type–like me, for example–can see the humor and surreal eloquence in Bobby’s fiction.
To call Revellian.Com a horror fiction blog would be misleading. Balancing out the fiction are articles on blogging, with content that delivers. Bobby picks apart the world of money-making blogs and cuts right to the chase on Entrecard, arguing that while it helps raise stats, the quality of the Entrecard traffic is generally low, with most participants staying just long enough to drop. He also takes on the "holy trinity" of Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon.
Just when you think you've gotten this blog figured out, that it's a little transgressional fiction mixed in with informative blogging tips, Bobby gets personal, writing about his struggles with depression. He discusses philosophy. And to lighten things up, there’s twisted humor as well!
Revell has been writing most of his life. He is also (among many other things) a guitarist and a student of several martial arts and the practice of Zen, interested in "the mysteries of human thought and everything in between." He believes "in truth, not mythology." And his platform, Revellian.Com is definitely worth a closer look, no matter your predilections.
So real you can taste it
Let’s look at the facts as revealed here: I’m a stay-at-home mom with a preschool-aged son. A former librarian, I went to culinary school and from there decided to be a writer. My family is relatively new to Northern California, having moved from the East Coast almost two years ago. I’ve told you my name. Given my birthday (oh, those worries about aging, forcing me to seek comfort on the web).
And if you’ve been here for a while, you know about the defining story of my life, the lifeless premature baby I gave birth to at home when I was sixteen.
But what do you really know?
Jennifer recovering from a late night, 1988? Or another photo to continue the ruse?
How would you feel if I was actually a 25-year-old male advertising copywriter from Peoria? What if I really lived in Buffalo, NY? Or if I was pushing 70, mother to a multitude of now middle aged children, grandmother to teenagers, a Brit using the blog to flesh out a character? This "Jennifer" person you think you've been reading could be someone I’ve been keeping in my back pocket for years. writing to survive might be some kind of grand fictional experiment, an attempt to create a flesh and bones person out of ethereal imagination.
And my stories? What if these were figments, scraps from my mind, absolute fiction masquerading as angst-ridden past? It could be that you've been reading full-blown literary lies à la Margaret B. Jones, the wannabe memoirist who made up a gangland childhood. Turns out my parents have been married for forever, I waited until marriage (or at least love) to have sex, and I’ve never touched a drop of alcohol. Oh, and that isn’t my son, he’s a nephew (never mind that I have no nephew).
Would you feel betrayed?
Don't worry. I don’t have it in me to lie like that, though you'll mainly have to take my word for it and trust your gut. There were times in high school and college when I was a serial liar, self-serving and hidden. My mother believed the stories about my solo nights, even when my boyfriend's car was parked right outside the Little House ("Oh, the car? Dirk leaves it there when he goes to the Cassady's. Sometimes he's had too much to drink, so he stays at their place for the night." "That's exactly what I thought, Jenna.") Later, I hid my unfaithfulness from my college boyfriends, created a protective distance by pursuing empty hopes with relative strangers.
Living a life of lies is a dirty business. I was becoming unrecognizable, murky, untrustworthy, a bad friend. So I stopped lying and regained a hold on fidelity. And while those old kinds of lies are no longer tempting, I still struggle with my tendency to exaggerate minor facts or to deny my feelings. Attempting to be good is a life-long process.
There is a difference between making things up to avoid punishment and creating stories to entertain. Stories aren't lies (and sometimes the lies we tell in our life stories aren't fibs either). If the blog tale is well-told, the characters believable, the created world tangible, so real you can taste it, does it matter if it actually happened? How would you know if it did?
We’re taking it all on faith in this blogging world, want to believe that everyone is who they present themselves to be. For the most part, I think people are genuine. Yes, we have plenty of time to shape our online selves, but we’re generally real. Still …
There must be bloggers, perhaps ones you read every day, who have created fiction under the guise of truth. Their blogs are ostensibly about their day to day existence, may even include some pieces of fiction or poetry or personal essay, but some of the facts have been turned inside out.
Maybe the writer doesn’t want to be identified, or is playing, having fun being someone else. The character that demanded life is finally born in a blog, fully realized, solid, interactive (the fresh-eyed college graduate moving back to her hometown; the landlocked fly fisherman reminiscing about his days of streams and trout; the tech-savvy doting grandma with an herbal tea obsession, a minor character in a SAHM's life). Or they add a totally fictional detail, erase a husband, gain a Weimaraner, make a virtual move from Asheville to Albany.
And what of it? Readers are entertained, the writer has an enthusiastic, satisfied audience. These are tenuous connections we have, the lengths of spider's silk stretching across the ether from blogger to blogger. Many of us have never even spoken. In these circumstances, does the truth matter?
I'm still trying to figure that one out.
The end of anonymity
In the beginning, there was Anonmomous.
Then it was simply Jennifer. But there were slip-ups. The PublicLiterature.Org stories with my full name. The e-mails I sent to others from my personal gmail account. The few blogging awards that went to Jennifer Fullname instead of to just Jennifer.
My father found the blog. I accidentally sent an e-mail to my ex-husband from the writing to survive account and I'm pretty sure he's been here. I have a sneaking suspicion that my brother-in-law has visited at least once. A friend from elementary school found me here. For a while the first hit on a Google search of my name (yeah, I google my own name. I'm not the only one, right?) was the blog, for reasons that are somewhat mysterious. Until today, the two weren't directly connected.
It's one thing to write to complete strangers. It's quite another to realize that people who may be a part of my story are reading. Or that casual friends might come upon this and find out more than they ever wanted to know about me. But as I kept on leaving the door ajar, I realized that I want to be open, needed it. What's there to hide? Just me.
So.
Here I am.
Jennifer Trinkle.
All other names have been changed to protect the innocent. In most cases.
December's blog: Inside Candy
— from Clarity, a poem by Candy Tothill
Candy Tothill of Inside Candy
I am officially jealous. Well, not exactly jealous, just dumbstruck with admiration. South African blogger Candy Tothill is a business owner, a mother to three, and one hell of a writer (who in her spare time is working on a book). Her blog, Inside Candy, is an enticing combination of poetry, rant, and keen observation.
Candy’s writing is evocative. Her poems dance around sadness and loss as she captures the elusive nature of a moment or a fleeting thought, the glimpse into someone else's window, a view into another way of being. In between the poems, she mixes it up with critiques on South African politics and thoughts about life. And while there's a lot of good stuff on her blog, she's written for several publications, too.
So, what are you waiting for? As Candy says, "Be not afraid. It will only offend readers to whom life itself is offensive."
What haven't I told you?
I let the first U.S. punk compilation slip out of my hands. Album cover from Rate Your Music.
Jean of Jean’s Musings – a lovely blog that I recommend highly – has passed a meme my way, a request to list five things that you might not know about me. Given how much I’ve revealed here, that’s a tall order, but I think I can dredge up some obscure facts.
*I once had a Secret security clearance. The think tank I worked for did a lot of work for the defense department and the library was responsible for the classified document collection. Getting the clearance was nerve-wracking, as was the proximity to potential national secrets. It was a relief to leave it behind.
*Although we do have a television, I don't watch it (this despite the fact that we've had mysterious cable access in our last two houses).
*Punk music was the soundtrack of my life for a long time. I knew my now-husband was a good match after we watched a movie that included the song Viva Las Vegas. As we were leaving the theater I told him “Every time I hear that song I …” He finished the sentence, “think of the Dead Kennedys version?” That’s right. Ahh, love.
*I got my license at 25 (or was that 26?), but I don’t drive. You wouldn’t want me to. Trust me.
*Despite a lifelong allergy to cats, I have never lived without at least one kitty, except for a brief pet-free period in college and graduate school. They are worth the asthma, the itchy eyes, the mounds of tissues.
An extra fact: I’ve got some recipes in the Nov/Dec issue of Vegetarian Times, along with a short profile in the contributers column. Go to your newsstand or local library and take a look. I'll be putting up more information on the Food Writing section eventually.
If you have your own five facts, I'd love to read them.
And for your listening pleasure, Viva Las Vegas!
The kindness of other bloggers
And if all this weren’t wonderful enough, Ken Armstrong of Ken's Writing Stuff gave me a copy of his recently published play, “The Moon Cut Like a Sickle,” after I correctly answered the question “What lady links ‘Mack the Knife’ with ‘From Russia with Love’"? Even though I cheated and used Google instead of actual knowledge, he was kind enough to send me a copy, all the way from Ireland to the far reaches of the continental U.S. Ken’s blog is a mix of movie reviews and stories, infused with optimism and humor. It's on my Google reader and it should be on yours, too.
Finally, the awards (and if I’ve missed one, I apologize. Please let me know). I am so happy that such a great group of writers and thinkers like what I am doing here. This time I'm passing each award on to another blogger who can do with it what they wish. Of course, the blogs below are only an example of the good stuff out there in the blogosphere and there are many that I read regularly and love that I haven't listed here.
Thank you, Geoffrey and Lidian! I'm passing this one on to Candy of Inside Candy.
Thank you, Lidian and Maitri! I'm passing this one on to Just Bob of the Essence of Bobness.
Thank you Lidian, Maitri, and Dori! I'm passing this one on to Karen of The Pitfalls of Life and Five Little Kids Named Larrow.
Thank you, Candy! I'm passing this one on to Koe at The Half-Life of Linoleum.
Thank you, Maitri! I can't single out any one blog here without feeling like I'm missing someone, so I officially pass this on to any blog on my blogroll.
Thank you, Judy! I am passing this one on to Lydia of Writerquake.
Next post: Is there anything I haven't told you?
November's blog: The Virtual Dime Museum
This month's featured blog, the Virtual Dime Museum, is a shift from personal history -- October’s Melindaville -- to popular history, offering a change of pace for November.
The Virtual Dime Museum provides a peek at advertisements, news stories, and sundry entertainments from the mid-1800s into the early 20th century. It is full of oddities and bizarre medical concoctions, sideshows and haunted houses. Writer Lidian, born and raised in New York City and now living in Canada, has created an entertaining and well-written three-ring circus of pop history, Brooklyn and New York history, and Victorian pop culture.
Whether it’s digging up an 1896 item about a skeleton hand found in Flatbush or profiling Victorian fascinations such as the animated bust, Lidian brings a sense of humor to the Virtual Dime Museum. Her interests in genealogy and history combined with her mad research and writing skills results in a diverting and dryly funny read. And if you like your pop history a little more recent, check out her other blog of kitsch and camp, Kitchen Retro.
October's blog: Melindaville
What could life be like after recovery from hardcore drug addiction?
Today Melinda Roberts Tyler is a successful and award-winning professor of psychology, happily married to her soulmate, full of warmth and gratitude for life. Over fifteen years ago, however, she was a heroin and cocaine addict living on the streets of San Francisco, at rock bottom with very little will to live.
Melindaville chronicles her journey from hardcore addict to honors student and professor. It is a fascinating, though often harrowing, story. After moving to San Francisco to pursue an acting career in the early 1980s, Melinda gets involved in the burgeoning punk scene and performs as part of the band Wild Women of Borneo. Along the way she becomes an exotic dancer and high-priced call girl, as well as demonstrates an entrepreneurial spirit by starting “the world’s first fantasy phone service,” Julie’s Hotline. As her dependency on drugs intensifies, her life begins to fall apart. It takes twelve years of addiction before she begins to put it back together again.
The blog contains excerpts from her memoir in progress (working title: Lost and Found: A Journey) as well as consciousness-raising posts on the nature of addiction as a health, not moral, issue, with underlying causes and more sophisticated solutions than “just say no.”
Melinda’s ultimate goal is to use the proceeds of her eventual book sales to fund a foundation for sex workers. Drug addiction and the sex industry are intertwined. Many sex workers choose that path after suffering childhoods of abuse. Maybe they start working in the business to support an existing habit or begin using just to get through the workday. Drugs like heroin or cocaine provide compelling comfort in a small package, a way to numb the pain of the past and present.
Melinda plans to fund treatment and higher education for these men and women who are so often invisible and voiceless. I can think of no better champion.
You guys are great!
About a month back, a new blogging friend, Melinda, wrote about saying her gratefuls. That’s what I’d like to do today, focusing specifically on this strange and wondrous virtual universe, the blogosphere: I am eternally grateful for the recognition and support of my fellow bloggers.
Last week, Karen of The Pitfalls of Life passed two awards my way.
and
Karen has another blog, Five Little Kids Named Larrow, where she writes stories about a very difficult childhood with an amazing clear-headedness, capturing the child’s innocent point of view. I think she's courageous, too, as well as a fine writer and photographer. Through the struggles of the past and present, she always finds a way to rise above. Thank you, Karen. You really are a good friend.
Also last week, Dori of A Yellow House in England passed the I Love Your Blog award along. Dori’s blog is about her adventures as an American expat married to a Brit. Written in a breezy conversational style with tales of little towns she visits and other stories from her life, A Yellow House is a fun read with some nice photography as well.
Finally, Susan Helene Gottfried of West of Mars not only received a bunch of awards (no shock there!), but she also gave a shout-out to blogs she enjoys reading, including writing to survive. Go to her blog to read her always-engrossing fiction, to peruse book reviews, or just to join in on the conversation.
I’ve been in a bit of a blogging slump lately, not feeling creative or chatty enough to leave comments. I’m getting tired of dropping my Entrecard all over the place. I haven't had much to post about. Even in my current ennui, I recognize that this virtual universe has helped bring me back to life. Blogging and the support of fellow bloggers can take a large part of the credit for connecting me with the world again, not only after a hard year in a strange place, but also after many years of keeping most people at a polite distance, years of sitting on my secrets and keeping my mouth shut.
This wasn't even the point of starting a blog for me initially. Building a community was far from my mind. I just needed an impetus to start writing. In that sense blogging has helped me connect back to myself, has helped the words flow.
I’m not sure where I’ll be going with this space. Starting next month, I will be taking a writing course in which will entail writing every day, including holidays and weekends. I hope this little push will not only help me find a local community but will also propel my writing forward. It doesn’t mean I’ll stop blogging or commenting, but it does mean that I will have to cut back. Or maybe I'll bring you all along with me on this new venture with updates and postings of my half-baked work. I don't know exactly how it will work.
What I do know is that I am grateful for my blogging friends. You have supported me on my journey and I look forward to having you along for the rest of the ride.
Thank you.
How did you get here?
I had no idea as I blithely googled my friends and neighbors and looked up various topics on the Web that anyone would be keeping track of my searches. But then I started this blog, became interested in the statistics, wanted to know how many people were coming, what they clicked on, etc., and discovered that these searches were logged. Google doesn't tell me who has been searching (thank goodness!), but it does list the search terms used to get here.
Some of the searches are from people who are struggling, for example: “why keep trying to survive in this world” or “writing to survive life’s struggles.” Did they find the answer here? I don't know. Most people don’t go beyond the first page. I wish I could hold out a hand for them, help them along the narrow and rocky path.
Then there are the more bizarre queries. Yes, the term bloodworms and marine do come up in close proximity in this blog, but probably not in a combination that the searcher was expecting. So, in the interest of lightening things up around here, I've listed some of the more interesting searches below.
- Hangover existential angst
- Underwater handstand
- How to survive traveling with a crazy boyfriend
- Brain nubbin
- Capricious father
- We have nothing in common but love – can our marriage survive
- Flim flan recipe
- Marine bloodworms
- Submissive Louise
- Teen girls baptized in diapers
What were these folks thinking as they read my blog? Hopefully they left entertained in some way.
Next post: acknowledging awards from two wonderful bloggers, Karen and Dori.
The wonderful, the not so good, and the unknown
Then, the unknown: my father found this blog. This is not a shocking development, since there is at least one link out there with my full name that points to writing to survive. What does it mean? I don’t know. I hope it means an open line of communication. And that’s all I’ll be saying about it here. Some things are meant to be – yes – private.
Finally, happily, the wonderful: two fine bloggers gave awards to writing to survive in the past week.
John of Storied Mind passed along the Brilliant Blog Award, which is quite an honor from someone who I think has a brilliant blog! The premise behind Storied Mind is that writing and creating stories about one’s experience with depression can help break through its deadening effects. Storied Mind also aims to create a community, a place where people can gather and discuss their experiences with depression. All of this is beautifully done, with thought-provoking posts that dive deep into the experience of mood-related disorders and what may work to reach clarity. Thank you, John. I am truly honored.
Kimmy of The Eagle The Lion and The Dove passed another award my way, the I Love Your Blog award. Kimmy’s blog is all about focusing on the light in darkness, seeking the beauty in the world and ourselves, knowing that none of us is perfect. It’s a great dose of daily inspiration. Thank you, Kimmy – I’m so happy we found each other via Entrecard!
As a way to share the love and highlight some outstanding blogs that are part of my daily reading, I am planning to have monthly reviews, with a feature on my sidebar linking to the Blog of the Month. Stay tuned for the October selection.
Missing comments
Thanks for being such a supportive, thoughtful group of readers. Your input is vital and has helped take this blog to places I never anticipated.
Excellent Blog Award
Writing to survive has been recognized by two wonderful bloggers this week.
Kathleen Maher of Diary of a Heretic was the first one to pass along the Excellent Blog Award. A warning: once you visit Kathleen’s blog, you won’t be able to stop reading! You can also find more of her fiction in The View from Here.
Then Bobbi of My Muse and Me passed the same award my way. I’ve recently come upon Bobbi’s blog and have been enjoying the mix of fiction, poetry, and discussions of everyday life.
Thank you both very much for the honor!
Early on, I decided that I wasn’t going to pass on memes or awards. Initially, it was because I didn’t want to trouble people with meme postings, and then it became difficult to decide who to pass on awards to: so many choices! The downside to my approach is that I never spread the love. I’m trying to think of a way to recognize some of the wonderful blogs I read on a regular basis, maybe by writing the ocassional review or by coming up with my own award.
Next week: a return to writing about writing? More about my mother’s visit?
I won’t know until I start typing.
From the inside
Part of what unsettled me was the link back to my own words (which I’ve changed to better reflect my feelings). The “why” of writing to survive was initially a rather bleak description of what life was like for me for the first two years of my son’s existence. This was a difficult time with many struggles to maintain eveness. I lost a lot of myself, my marriage changed, and I’d have to say there was some depression tossed into the mix, too, though I was never treated.
So. I love my son. I am lucky to stay home with him. He makes me laugh. We dance and sing and talk and read together. He has also been an impetus for change, a reminder to slow down and enjoy. With him I am able to remake my own childhood, borrowing the good bits and discarding the bad. I am lucky to be able to do this AND write.
Which brings me to my husband, an amazing man who is my biggest supporter. When I need reassuring about my parenting skills, he is quick to soothe. He loves to read my work. He gets take-out when I am tired of cooking. He understands when I use naptime (when naptime happens) to write instead of clean. We are truly a team. I love you, H.
There are nuances to this angst, and as I’ve been writing here and privately, the angst shifts and dissipates. The words have saved me.
This is writing to survive.
Seven facts
Instead of passing it along, I offer it up to anyone who would like to participate.
7 FACTS about Jennifer
1 - WORK: I was a reference librarian for about ten years, first for a state legislative agency, then for a Washington, DC think tank, and finally for the "world's greatest deliberative body." Four years of working 40-50 hour weeks in a basement paging through Congressional Records, locating report language, and watching C-SPAN with my colleagues for the laughs led to disillusionment and burnout. (Note: There is really much more to the job than that, but an exhaustive listing of what we did would bore most readers). I quit to go to culinary school.
Took a detour to be a stay-at-home mother and freelance writer.
2 - EDUCATION: After one false start, I received a bachelors in philosophy, a masters in library science, and a certificate from a culinary school. My first college experience was about drinking; my second, about thinking, my third, about getting a job, and my fourth about taking a chance while I still could.
3 - FRIENDSHIP: When I do make a friend, it is generally for life (even when I am not good at keeping in touch). I’m still figuring out how to make connections as a reserved person without a traditional working life in a place I don’t know very well, since we’re still fairly new to Northern Californa. It isn’t easy, but I am getting there. I don’t need a posse, just a few confidants.
4 - RELATIONSHIPS: My second husband and I have been married five years as of last Saturday, and have been together for ten. After a tough 2007, we’re in a good place now. Happy belated anniversary, honey!
5 - WWW: The Internet was just taking off when I was in graduate school. I remember becoming quite engrossed in the usenet groups. Gopher -- a kind of menu-driven WWW -- was the hot technology during my first library job. It’s a totally different world now. Completely addictive, too, especially now that I am blogging.
6 - FITNESS: Run 3x a week when I can, other exercise on the off days, walk almost everywhere. I’ve been mainly vegetarian (some fish) for 13 years and don’t see going back to eating meat.
7 - DREAMS: One basic dream: that I make an authentic life as a writer. A better way to put it: I am living an authentic life as a writer, making the dream a reality. (Thank you to The Fearless Blog for cheerleading the idea that we must think something to make it so.)
Kick-Ass Blogger Award
According to Angel, A Kick-Ass Blogger is a blogger who can grab your attention and give you something to chew over for the rest of the day and in doing so, entices you back for more. A Kick-Ass Blogger is someone who is witty, articulate, and informative. I was introduced to Here and Now via Entrecard, and I am continually impressed at how direct Angel is in dealing with some difficult issues, sometimes through poetry, other times by just writing out her thoughts for the day. Thank you, Angel. I am honored.
Arte y Pico Award
Marlene of The Fearless Blog has presented me with the Arte y Pico award, which is given to bloggers who inspire others with their writing or artwork. If you need inspiration and a dose of motivation, Marlene's blog is a good place to start. For a wonderful example of her work, take a look at Straddling Between Two Worlds on the PublicLiterature.Org website.
Thank you, Marlene! I am honored.
In the beginning ...
When I started this blog in late December of last year, I wasn't in a good place. All the things I've been writing about since then were burbling just below the surface, barely suppressed, waiting to be given form and shaped into a story. I used a pseudonym -- Anonmomous -- and wrote pretty freely about my angst at the time, my desperation, the stifled creativity that I blamed on my daily mundane existence mixed in with a childhood hangover.
I had no creative outlet, but a strong desire to write and figured that starting a blog would force me to do it on a regular basis. Maybe I would find others out there like me, or attract an audience (even an audience of one would have been wonderful). But nobody reads a blog if they don't know about it. I started using my real first name, joined blogcatalog, and things started to look up.
Most of my early posts are gone, but I recently found an interesting one from right before I "came out." I've reproduced it below.
Thanks to Geoffrey for asking some questions that got me thinking about the early days and how the process of self-expression has actually changed the story I've created for myself.
I also have to thank The Fearless Blog for her kind profile of writing to survive, and her words of encouragement. As usual, she got me thinking about how a positive attitude can change the equation entirely.
Manufacturing interest
18 February 2008
As I was thinking about whether I would post tonight, not sure if I had anything to say, I decided I would manufacture something of interest to write about: the manufacturing of interest in what I am writing here.
I have no idea how you arrived at this blog, whether you find it entertaining, or relevant, or worth five minutes of your time. I could probably come out of the closet, quit being anonymous, and invite people I know to read it, or at the very least passively put up the address in my facebook profile and e-mail signature. Perhaps then the blog would spread like a benevolent virus across cyberspace, e-mailed here and there: you simply HAVE to read this.
Would more people read? Maybe. Would it affect what I write here? Most definitely. In a good way? I am not sure. Currently, I can write corny or stupid or revealing stuff here without worrying about hurting anyone's feelings or worrying about looking corny or stupid. I would probably remove anything non-writing related, which may be the cleaner and kinder way to go. I still have much mulling to do on the topic.
H and I took advantage of our holiday Monday babysitter to go into the city. We wandered around North Beach, did some vintage shopping, had lunch. We ended up at City Lights and I was suddenly overwhelmed by all that fiction, non-fiction, poetry, ecology, etc etc, titles and authors I have never heard of and will probably never read.
What a crazy idea it is to write when there are so many talented people out there who can barely sell a book.
But I can't worry about that now, can I?
Seven songs: another meme
List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.
Although I can't say that there are seven songs that are shaping my summer season, I can list seven songs that I've listened to lately, almost all while dancing around with the kid. And we don't listen to a lot of current stuff, apparently, so I apologize in advance to the youngins.
Belle & Sebastian: The State I Am In
Reminds me of a different summer, but I still listen to it and the kid has been listening to Belle & Sebastian since birth.
Robyn Hitchcock: Belltown Ramble
My husband and I recently attended a Nick Lowe/Robyn Hitchcock show at the Fillmore. Robyn played this tune, H bought the CD, and we are now hooked. My son asks for the Bell song, and we move around the room, swaying our arms.
White Stripes: Seven Nation Army
Good stomping music.
Sonic Youth: Bull in the Heather
Don't know how to explain this one, but we likes distortion.
Prince: Dance, Music, Sex, Romance
We had a morning of dance. I was thinking of my old college roommate, who was a Prince fan, and there you have it.
Kenny Loggins: House at Pooh Corner
I wrote about this recently. Now the kid sings it, too, though he doesn't catch all the words. It's cute.
Cassandra Wilson: Children of the Night
This song brings me back to a different time in my life, in a bittersweet way.
Instead of passing this on to seven bloggers, I invite anyone who would like to participate to post their own seven songs.
In six words: a meme
OK. I am up for the challenge.
Who would have thought: me, here?
There have been a few surprising turns in my life. Spending five years in the midwest? Never would have anticipated it. Cooking school in New York? No way. Being a stay-at-home-mom in Berkeley, California? Oh, but I would never leave the East Coast again ...
And most surprising of all: tell my secrets to the world (well, to a small group of loyal readers) on a "blog"? You must be joking.
So now I pass it along to the following bloggers, if they wish to participate:
Clinically Clueless
The Pitfalls of Life
Geoffrey's Farrago
Shiv's Brain
The Essence of Bobness
The lost weekend
Reminder to self: be more careful. Read the manual. Back everything up. Test out the web page in different browsers.
And pay more attention to Timethief. She knows what she’s talking about.
Next week: more recipe development for Vegetarian Times.
Um, Hello?
Welcome to my not-quite-fully-baked web page.
I've spent the last 24 hours trying to recreate my deleted blog entries. Got most of them, though the early stuff is missing. Just figured out that I can't get a working redirect from blogger (that darn 'www' in my web address makes that difficult, apparently), so I am starting from scratch.
I still have lots of content to create. Not sure if I'm happy with my descriptions (too melodramatic? not enough information? do I want to be a melodramatic woman of mystery? does my profile picture negate the idea that I am a melodramatic woman of mystery?). I also have to enter what I've written so far of "A Prolonged Illness" and "A Shifting Scar." I don't think they worked well in the blog format.
I'm curious how the look of the page will affect the feel of the words. Even typing into the little box I now have for blog entries feels completely different. Funny how a change in layout or type alters the whole experience.
Anyway, hope you like it.
Watch this space
The hours were long and being exposed to the inner workings of the legislative branch got old. There was micromanagement. Basement darkness. So I quit and went to cooking school. Finished cooking school and had a baby. And when part of me slowly reawakened, I began writing.
One of the things I miss about the working world is creating things for the Web (another thing that might have my old colleagues scratching their heads). Although I'm not sure how many people read or use the web pages I created, I am still proud of them, though I've deleted links to them. This document has been edited now that I'm out of the closet.
I'm in the middle of redesigning this blog and putting together an Internet site using Rapidweaver. It's kind of like the old days, except I have more control and no technical support. I'm limping my way through and it's slow going. Hopefully it will be up in a week or so, but until it is I may not be posting as much or checking in with my friends.
See you soon.
Bloggers Unite for Human Rights
I really didn't want to think about this one.Why? Because I feel helpless. Human rights abuses happen in far away places to people I can't touch, look in the eye, or help in any concrete way.
Right?
Maybe not. For example, Guantanamo Bay was created by my own government, a government in which I presumably have a voice. I could participate in international pressure against the Myanmar junta, which could get supplies to people who are dying. There are tons of examples from across the globe -- violence against women, the horror in Darfur, LGBT human rights, etc. etc. Once you start to read about human rights abuses, you realize that the idea of human rights isn't universal. And even nations who tout the cause violate it.
Get involved. If enough people try, maybe, just maybe, the world will change . . . I hope. OK, I'm still a little cynical. But I won't let that stop me from trying. It takes so little to try.