It’s like a pool table after the break the way people distance themselves in an elevator. Perfectly equidistant. If I were a rat and you were a phone. For twenty-two years I’ve seen the same doctor in the same office building and the doorman never acknowledges me.Today he had a little shower cap on his cap for the rain or threat of rain. Do you have any idea how much I have hated people who talked about the weather. A red headed messenger reminded me of a boy I went out with in college, neither of us being the other’s first choice. Makes for some really abject lovemaking. If you can’t tell, I am my old cheerful self tonight waiting for a manuscript to fall from the sky and kill me.
What are you looking at?
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Are there any writers who you love so much that you read all of their books? That you drop everything when a new book of theirs is published? That you reread them so often that the spines are broken, the pages soft with wear? THat you won’t lend them? That you go their readings and are either too tongue tied to say anything or blather like a fool? That you get into bar brawls over them? And keep buying copies of their books to give to friends. And when they publish a stinker you understand and forgive. After all, who can be a genius all of the time?
I write, produce, direct, and perform brilliant monologues while driving. They are usually inspired by some lingering resentment I’ve nursed throughout the day, being honked at (especially for not responding quickly enough when the light turns green), or seeing someone with a strange outfit as I did today, like the guy in seersucker shorts, orange day glow socks, and a Mohawk gelled within an inch of its life. The monologues, also known as rants, mine the ugliest parts of myself and range widely. I will attack anything and anyone including the aged and infirm. And I will astonish myself at how nasty, degenerate, and cruel I can be. Actually, it comes as no surprise.
When I worked as the corporate file coordinator at Morgan Stanley, I picked up a few business tips and truisms. One was that you had to give any new venture at least five years before pulling the plug. I think there is an analogy with writing, though it may be more like ten years. Or twenty. And worse, there may be no plug. I think it’s good to have five year goals. I think it’s good to keep track of progress or lack thereof so that you don’t gaslight yourself about whether or not you’re making progress. It’s very easy to lose track and fail to see the strides you do make.
The lights came back on today. Joy. We were only inconvenienced. Nothing more. I keeping thinking about the woman whose two young children were swept away from her when their street flooded. There was so much devastation, many lives lost. But it’s that woman I think of, the biblical scope of her loss. The universal fear: letting go of what we love, having it taken from us. Great waves of loss sweep through our lives. My father. My sister. Then Tom by his own hand. I break this silence with news of the worst sort. Friends, writers, aunts, heroes. You don’t think: this. This storm. This tree twisted off at the trunk as easy as a soda cap. When the lights came on I walked through the house as if I were being led through by a realtor, noting every room for its particular charm. Yes, that molding is lovely, just lovely. In the small library, a reading light cast a halo on the couch, and in its glow a book with a marker somewhere in the middle.
Dear Lost Souls: are you out there, did you wake up, is it dry, are you alright? I’m writing from an internet cafe and feeling the first sun on my face in a while. We still don’t have power, NYC is a mess, but our home was not struck by a two hundred year old tree. Some food is starting to rot. At night, we read by candlelight, very LIttle Women. Then a flashlight guides the way upstairs, and for a moment I am in a movie I’d prefer not to be in. In my dreams last night, Matt Damon was seated next to me on a plane and confided in me that he had kissed a man. Then he asked me what I thought was my best quality. I said, I’m kind. Just now, the sky looks like an El Greco painting. I am on my third Americano. And I’m wondering about all of you love bugs.
Betsy Lerner 