I found this image on my desktop. It reflects how I'm feeling right now. Kind of a mess, very inward, but not too bad. I'm wearing (in the photo) my ruby earrings. The rubies are from Nepal and hand cut in Tibet, or so said the too handsome salesman at the high-end Tibetan shop on Union Street where I stopped in on an impulse right before Christmas. I have my hand in front of my mouth not so much to stop myself from talking but from letting the world fly in the opening. I haven't been writing here because I've been working on my book, and it became clear to me that I needed to contain my energy for that project, to let the pressure build. It's working, the writing is opening up in ways it wasn't before. At first it sounded (and felt) so lonely, just me, my journal, and Microsoft Word, but it's been good, difficult at times, but if I stick with it, there's an opening to glory, which is one of the best feelings in the world. So many wonders lie on the other side of emptiness, but it's hard to have faith to delve into it, kind of like jumping into the icy pool at a spa. Pam Martin and I went to the Kabuki spa last Friday because I found an ancient gift certificate that Brian Bauman had given me. The pools there are shallow, and as opposed to dunking into the cold pool in one clean sweep, as I've done at Korean spas, here you have to squat yourself down into it, a slower process and damned near impossible to follow through on. I did it once. Pam did it 3 times, she said it got easier. Even though they're funkier and more brightly lit, I like the Korean spas better; less attitude. But Pam and I have vowed to return to the Kabuki to use up the rest of the gift certificate. After all that bourgie pampering, we just had to dine someplace upscale, so we chose Dosa—where I once ate a rather unsatisfactory meal with the buddhist, who didn't like the food, and I hadn't been back there since—but Pam and I luxuriated in the Malbec, the dinner, and the best sorbet I've ever tasted. We had a very interesting conversation I vaguely remember, something to do with art and critiques, what sort of feedback is useful to a writer/artist.
Gilbert Sorrentino on writing workshops:
Creative writing workshops are useful in that they tend
to bring together young writers who have nobody to talk
to. Otherwise, I can say only that in my own experience
of them, it is rare that bad writers can be helped or
that good writers could not do as well without ever
seeing a workshop. Of course, bad writers can often be
helped to make marketable products by sheer dint of
dogged revision and the mastery of certain modes of
"craft," and good writers can be so regularly
assailed—by instructors, colleagues, or both and/or
mature, become dejected and confused as to the quality of
their writing.
I could not agree more. So glad that this semester it's all seminars and working one on one with people.
But, anyway, this is to say, that I probably won't be posting much. You can see I'm kind of dull when it comes to talking to others. I'm doing okay, just doing my private scribbles which Ugly Duckling Presse will make public scribbles in the not too distant future. Much sweetness between Kevin and me these days. We recently watched
That Funny Feeling, staring Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin, and agreed it was one of the best comedies we'd ever seen. "Sandra Dee is underrated," Kevin declared. I once was in the women's room of the Castro Theater with Sandra Dee. She was the live guest. She was so drunk, she couldn't get her pants zipped back up and her blouse tucked in, so her handler had to step in and put her back together. So there was the sadness of mortality looming over my watching the superb acting of young Sandra Dee. At a certain point in your life, mortality looms over everything. Oh, yes.
