Dear Insane People Who Write: Why do you like being dangled by your feet from the twentieth floor of a down-on-its-heels Marriott in a bankrupt city? Why do you like the feeling of your eyes being peeled back like the film inside a hard boiled egg? Was it worth removing your baby toe? Or turning a pimple into a mole? Yes, I’m back for more Immodium; what’s it to you? Yes, I take sleep aids. So what if you find me walking down a dark street in my nightgown? It was just a dream that lasted seven months and then I awoke. Why do you torture yourself unnecessarily, my father used to ask. Because necessary torture is for lightweights? You can no longer remember the name of the first boy you fucked. Or what you paid for your first house. If you had chicken or prime rib at your own wedding. Why do you like to get punched in the face, apart, of course, from being a writer?
Got milk?
Filed under: Authors, neurosis, self-loathing, Undead, Writers, Writing | Tagged: Angsting, Nightmares, writing | 29 Comments »
Went to a museum today, saw some paintings that could have been old friends. Went to a play and fell into a deep sleep. When I awoke a young man shouted something about jumping into the Danube, and then the actors came out and bowed to to weak applause. The painting is impervious to my feeling; is that possible? And what about the double play, the white cotton nightgown with spaghetti string straps? A Japanese bowl perfectly decorated with blue pansies. Is it likely that painting coffins in rust and red, the painter dreamed his death by his own hand? Or the beautiful rear end of a woman in an orange towel making a bed, packing a suitcase. This is the story I tell myself. A grandmother in a yellow sari dotted with mirrors the size of quarters stands beside Christina’s World as her daughter snaps a picture on her iPad. The actor playing Wittgenstein is almost dashing. He is the last thing I see before I fall asleep.
August. The month of my birth. The month of Helter SKelter. The month Jerry died. Guess who’s elevating? August, the beloved curmudgeon, cursing out some feckless bank teller. Vivian, creative genius pottering. Stacy Horn back to press. SSS on it. What was the world we had? Slipped away. Came back when most expected. Least longed for or the other way around. I am waiting for a kiss. A sweet embrace against a brick wall where we made out in 1985 and 1986 and then broke up and I wrote four last songs. What about two solid weeks to revise the document I call Fuckmedead. What about a dog’s leg resting in the crook of your arm? When did wheelhouse come into the parlay? Not in my mental house. Not in this physical body. I have lost the thread. So what? The thread lost me.
The results are in. Sheri Booker has spoken. The top three winners of the funeral contest are:
I met Teri on Friday night here in New Haven. She was here for a writer’s conference and looked me up. She was here last year, too, and got in touch. But I successfully avoided her then. I couldn’t do it again. I have not relished the idea of meeting anyone who reads the blog, even those I’ve come to love through their comments. First, it scary. Second, I know I can’t possibly live up to any expectations. Third, like most writers I’m the fraud behind the curtain. I send out these the sentences with the hope of a fortune in a stale cookie. I’ve got this persona and the one I bring to my work as agent fairly well developed by now, but it doesn’t make me okay, or any more real. Or at least not more real than sitting behind a computer or with a notebook at a cafe describing the girl across the way, her wool socks on a summer day.
Guys, guys, guys, guys. It’s Book Expo in New York. I just tripped over Scott Turow. I didn’t get invited to the Malcolm Gladwell party. I didn’t get invited to my own publisher’s party. That I take as a badge of pride. I ran into a book rep I haven’t seen since the Fifties, but he’s still wearing that bolo and I still remember Miami. I saw a machine that makes books on demand. I saw a vampire in broad daylight. I saw my beloved Japanese agent and she was wearing a gorgeous floral skirt that she bought at thrift shop, then corrected herself: Vintage. I met with a mother-daughter team who sell audio books. When I told the daughter she looked like Kim Kardashian she seemed to be insulted. I wandered through the booths thinking about all the publishing jobs I had, all the bosses I didn’t blow, all the massive excitement I used to feel helping books come into the world and learning how to galvanize my passion. Or how I could get high off the smell of books fresh out of the carton. Or the party I once threw for a first collection of stories, decorating my apartment with candles and peaches.
Betsy Lerner 