I don't want to do SQUAT today

I don't want to do SQUAT today.  Everything seems pointless. I try to walk and find I'm on a treadmill rapidly moving backwards. I don't want to leave my chair. I don't want to put away the dishes, thank you very much, or clean the birdcage. I don't. I don't want to check the mailbox, with that creak when you open up the top, and find rejection letters, more rejection letters. I don't want to sit here and diddle. I don't want to think about Christmas. I don't want to think about Christmas with dread. I don't want to think about how Christmas has been ruined. I don't want to think about the fact that my blog tells me I've had 30,000 views in a year, when I only get 2 views a day. Obviously it can't do math. I don't want to go take a shower. I don't want to feel like this. I want some hope. I don't want to feel this alone. I don't want to stare out at my cedar boughs and see rusty, brown, dead growth. I don't want to hand back a review copy to my editor because I don't goddamn understand the book, or perhaps it's because I loathe it. I don't want to see a writer win every award in the book after my rapturous review of his novel. I don't want to keep handing the lifeline to the next person, and the next person, and the next person, until I drown. I don't want to think about the future. I don't want to think about my grandchildren getting older and not wanting to be seen with me. I don't want to think about how they will soon see through me, and therefore probably stop loving me. I don't want to think about how the best moments in my life flew by so fast that I didn't even notice, and can only be longed for in retrospect. I don't want to sit here. I don't want to not sit here. I don't want to think about positive thinking and all that crap, I hate it. I don't want to be accused of being "negative" even though I know I AM "negative". I don't want to feel that my whole life has somehow been a miss. It went wide and I don't know why and I can't retrieve it. I don't want to realize how late it is for certain things and how I will probably never achieve them now. I don't want to think about my dream slipping through my fingers like a nasty little bar of soap. I don't want to think about something awful happening to my loved ones. Being widowed. Not wanting to live any more. Living thirty more years alone. I dont want to think about the sense of living in a void where no one hears me. I don't want to think about publishing this and having one or two people (or maybe zero!) read it and think I am a loser and/or haven't tried hard enough. I don't want it to be Thursday. I don't want it to be today.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Paradise lost

I don't know if it's really gonna be like this, but Cavalia, a travelling horse show which is billed as a kind of Cirque de Soleil with horses, is supposed to be impressive beyond words. They claim to train their horses naturally with hand signals, and yes, I know it can be done, with years of patience. And it's a damn sight better than the foam-dripping mouths of horses with their chins cranked into their chests, hiking their knees so high they must risk injuring themselves with every performance.

You hear stories of heavy clunky boots strapped on to the feet of Tennessee Walkers, forcing them to lift their hoofs higher than they know how. Sometimes harsh chemicals are applied to their feet to blister them into obedience.

Anyway, it won't be like that tonight, as I watch in wonder on opening night of Cavalia in Vancouver. We lucked into four choice tickets from a news anchor at my daughter's workplace: all the anchors got free tickets, whereas the mere reporters, who work twice as long and hard, got doodlysquat. But fortunately, the 11:30 p.m. anchor couldn't attend, and so. . .

And so, four of us, my daughter, 7-year-old Caitlin, her little friend and I, will sit and watch (in good seats, saved for media who might write it up or broadcast a glowing report) as horses prance and dance, and riders twirl around balletically as they gallop in circles.

The horse is my totem animal, my touchstone, the essence of my soul, even though I never get to spend any time with them. This seems to symbolize the essential frustration I feel about living on planet Earth: I am forever thrust out of Eden, though there was a time when I lived there and didn't even know it.
That time whizzed by at light speed, leaving me behind to look around in bewilderment: where have all the horses gone?

This blog originally was supposed to be about The Writer's Life. Phoooey on that. If it is, it's a place to pour out the corrosive acid of having doors continually slammed in my face. The situation seems nearly hopeless, as I am long past writing for fun or amusement. An author, like an actor, is someone who has crossed a certain threshhold. Driving cab will never do it, though everyone seems to think I should just be happy I put those books out at all.

Well, maybe I should be.

Writer's workshops and conferences (and books and more books) tell you how to present your work to editors effectively. Yes. And that's about it. No one tells you how to navigate the desperate minefield of actually dealing with publishers when you are at cross-purposes with them, and when your agent continually sides with them as they slowly mangle your work to pieces.

What does all this have to do with Cavalia? Exactly nothing, except that horses, like publishing my novels, seem to be part of a great Paradise Lost that I wander around in every day. I must have had some sort of stupid expectation that I would go on publishing. I went on writing, after all, didn't I? I wrote three more books. And there they sit, warehoused.

I wonder if maybe this really is about the writer's life, as every other writer I've talked to tells the same bitter story. Yet, at the same time, someone is being published, or there wouldn't be a publishing business, would there? Well, would there?

It's just that the someone needs to be me.

Hands off, Jon . . or not. . .

I'm not used to having my most cherished fantasies come true. As always, there's a story behind this-all.

At some point in my Mad Men worship, I decided I wanted a t-shirt with Don Draper on it. A reasonable request, I thought.

I found what was touted as the Official Merchandise Site for all that stuff, an outfit called Gold Label. Don't be fooled, this should be called Chintz Label. I ordered a "fitted" women's t-shirt which was called "moderately loose". In a size Large, because I didn't want to order an X-Large. I always see that as Size Elephant.

After paying $40 and waiting a few weeks, I got my t shirt. The package seemed awfully thin, as if there wasn't anything in there. I took it out. It would have fit a slim 10-year-old. I should have known from the picture, which was so skinny on the bottom it would never accomodate the most modest female
hips.

It smelled bad, like a synthetic which had been sweated into, real Star Trek stuff. It brought to mind the petroleum-based crimplene of the '70s. The logo was that smooth, paintlike, shiny layer that cracks in the wash.

To their credit, when I complained about it, the company sent a refund and didn't even ask for the shirt back. I'm glad, because they probably would have sent it back out there.

SOOOOOO. . . (Is anyone interested in this? I thought so), I went to Plan B and looked on eBay. Like Alice's Restaurant, in nearly every case, you can get anything you want.

For $20, a black tee, size Large, brand Gilden. It came promptly, and did not disappoint. It was made of real cotton, topstitched shoulders, and the only fit problem was the length, so I had it altered to bring up the hem 4". I got it from tees-aplenty. Remember that name, folks.

But the most gratifying thing about my gorgeous new shirt is the placement of Don Draper's hands. They are squarely over my breasts, and in pinch position.

I can dream, can't I?

Is this my new diary?

So anyways, I'm back from holidays on a pitiless, brutal dripping Monday, Vancouver at its worst. It won't let up for a couple of days, by the looks of it. I realize with a shock that I never write in my journal any more. It just doesn't occur to me. I've been keeping a journal since I was eight. I have let go of so much in my life that used to be meaningful, so much so that I don't dare tot it all up.

So I'm left with projects that might strike others as pretty weird. I'm always wanting to make something, from Wonder Knitter dolls (no pattern for these, as usual: they evolve in my hands) to unusual installations. I had these ice-like rocks, plastic actually, used for accents or decorations, and I wanted to display them. I put them in a glass bowl and thought, ho-hum. It just didn't work for me. So what sort of container could I come up with that would be completely original?

At the same time, we were cleaning out closets and turfing out things (fall cleaning, I guess) that we didn't need or use. We found what seemed like hundreds of old cassette tapes that we never played, or couldn't play due to oxidation and age. So we had to get rid of them, but I began to look at the clear plastic cases and think, hmmmmm. . .

So I came up with these. I've since used crystal hearts in various colors, and will experiment with other things. But what's the point? I don't sell them. I'm not much of an entrepreneur (or however you spell that - it's Monday). Maybe that's why I can't sell my novel(s) and book(s) of poems. I can make the "product", but can't distribute it.

These might be seen as too odd, but the effect I'm after is: what are these things? They look familiar, and yet. . . Or, maybe people would just look at them and say, cassette tapes. How lame. I don't know. The voice of my older sister, forever undermining my creative spirit with caustic, withering remarks, still echoes in my ears: "You're weird, Margaret." "You're crazy!" (said in a shrugging, completely dismissive way. Jesus, how did I get on to this? Just how much damage did she

do?)

One reason I got turned off with my diary is that it had devolved into one big rant. The dissatisfactions in my life were being amplified, I think. I started tearing up the rants, but nothing much was left.

I have love in my life, and that's supposed to be all you need. I still feel creative. But when I presented my five-year-old granddaughter with the little 3" handmade doll I crafted, with the tiny knitted dress and beaded belt and braids, she threw it back at me. I'm not supposed to be upset, am I?

I look in the mirror, and I swear I can't see the kick-me sign. Is it invisible, but only to me?