The girl with the violet eyes

We all knew it had to happen. For the past several years, reports on her health had been increasingly bleak. At the end, all we had were a few cruel papparazzi shots taken through the fingers of someone trying to cover the lens. She was frail and slumped over in a wheelchair, but, extraordinarily, still carefully made up and coiffed for the cameras.

I don't need to tell you much about Elizabeth Taylor (who once snarled at a reporter, "Don't call me Liz!"), because she was a sort of one-woman pageant, or perhaps spectacle, for all of her 79 years. She belonged to her public, and on some level she always knew it, but, stubbornly, ferociously, she also insisted on belonging to herself.

She ran through an awful lot of husbands, many of them foolish choices (Eddie Fisher being almost as incomprehensible as Larry Fortensky). Two of them she called "the love of her life" (and only Taylor could have had more than one of those). I've always sought out Taylor bios compulsively, the best one being Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger's recent Furious Love, which concentrates on her unmanageable passion for the human wreckage that passed for Richard Burton.

Ah, Liz and Dick, Dick and Liz, horrible for each other and meant for each other, snapping and snarling and making turbulent love through two whole marriages that both enriched them (as in their brilliant collaborations in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Taming of the Shrew) and tore them to pieces.

The description of Burton's slow agonizing descent into intractible alcoholism is particularly excruciating to read. Here was a lavishly talented actor who like Anthony Hopkins emerged from a tiny, stigmatized coal-mining country, but who - unlike Hopkins, who escaped in time - was constitutionally incapable of being honest with himself about the booze.

Taylor seemed to be matching him drink for drink, so what happened? Was she a lot tougher than she looked (which she had to be, surviving endless surgeries for all sorts of ailments and injuries), or was he just unusually fragile? There was always something disturbingly passive about him as he hitched his wagon to Elizabeth's blazing star. The Furious Love bio is peppered with charming little notes he wrote for her, calling her Twiddle-Twaddle and Fatso. He wanted more than anything else to be a writer and would sit and try to write a novel, finally passing out at the typewriter. It was all very sad.

I won't sit here and tell you stuff you already know. I'll only give you a few impressions: Elizabeth walking into the poolroom where Monty Clift is hiding out in A Place in the Sun, the two of them so preternaturally beautiful that the camera wants to hide its eyes from the blaze. Her bravura performance in Suddenly, Last Summer (almost ignored, though it is one of her best) in which she gives a 20-minute monologue breathlessly describing a secret so horrific her family threatens to bury it with a lobotomy.

In spite of being a successful child actress who gave a stunningly sweet performance as the ultimate horsy little girl in National Velvet, she lacked some of the equipment that helps an actress be taken seriously. She had a kind of unfortunate voice, with no resonance and a tendency to shoot up into near-squeakiness, but she got past that. She was so stunning that at first sight, men thought they'd been hit with a board. She got past that. And those world-famous violet eyes (yes, they really do seem to be a sort of bluish lavender in the early shots) and the voluptuos body with a waist so tiny she didn't need corsets for period dramas, and the screaming fishwife personal dramas played out right in front of us. All this she somehow incorporated.

And jewels, and dogs, and children, and more husbands and more husbands, and John Warner and obesity and a diet and a book and a stage career (not too stellar), and Larry Fortensky and Michael Jackson and AIDS campaigns and and and

This was a very long, very large life. I liked her, always did. Liked the way she laughed like a drunken sailor on leave (one critic said). And I can share a secret with you now. I was in the same room with her.

I can't say I exactly saw her, though a couple of times I glimpsed the top of her head and heard that famously squeaky voice. I was part of a crowd of hundreds of people pressed together on the stifling fourth floor of a department store in Vancouver, waiting for a visitation by the grand dame herself as she launched yet another fragrance, called White Poodles, or Violent Passion, or something like that. (Nobody gave a rip about the perfume.)

Gay men were jumping up and down to get a glimpse of her. Well, how did I know they were gay? When Elizabeth (I refuse to call her Liz, she hated that!) began to expound upon the fact that her little Maltese had "poo-poo-ed" on the hotel carpet, one of them said, "Too much infor-maaaaaaa-tion", and I can't imagine a straight man saying that.

Funny, because that huge crowd wasn't all older people as you'd expect. Every age and every gender was represented (so to speak). Hers was the greatest camp performance of all time, and people couldn't wait to see it.

But don't forget who she really was. Don't forget her shrieking harridan in Virginia Woolf reducing Burton to a pile of emotional wreckage. Don't forget Maggie the Cat almost bursting out of her white slip while an oblivious Paul Newman drinks himself into a stupor. She was a lot of people, yet somehow or other, in the midst of all the hullaballoo of her life, she remained herself. Big-hearted, big-chested, violet-eyed, rowdy, ladylike, Dame Elizabeth, shrieking harridan Elizabeth, caring human being surviving in shark-infested waters, her humor and even her supernatural beauty intact.

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.

Do I have to actually write something?

This is the best of times, and the worst of times, all glommed together.

Things are particularly sweet with my grandkids. For Ryan's 5th birthday, I knitted him a new blankie, his old one having been reduced to a pile of strings. Now he must transfer his attachment to a nice-looking one, which I hope he won't pull to pieces.

Caitlin's new lavendar fuzzy replaces her yellow fuzzy. She bit a big chunk out of it - no kidding, and she's 7. She wore away at the edge of it for a couple of years until it had a big semicircular bite mark on it. I begged her not to chew this one to pieces, as it cost about $45.00 to make.

NO MORE BLANKIES, I swear! Yes, I love making them, but it strikes me as silly to go on and on replacing them until they're in university or something, or getting married. "Where did the groom go?" "Oh, he lost his blankie. We'll just have to hold up the service."

In other news, things are moving along, or at least moving, maybe, in my search for a home/venue/a shred of hope on The Glass Character. I suddenly joined Facebook and feel foolish now because my "profile" was nothing but a desperate ad for the novel. I'll have to change it today if I can get the bally thing to work. I feel embarrassed, because I don't know Facebook from a hole in the ground and swore I wouldn't go there. BUT I REFUSE TO TWEET. I have a bird to do that.

I have a bird that whistles, I have a bird that sings.
I have a bird that whistles, I have a bird that sings.
But if I ain't got a contract,
Life don't mean a thing.

Just so.

Across the Universe (NOT the John Lennon song)

The "It's Life, Jim, But Not As We Know It" polka.

Lucy! In! The! Sky! With! Diamonds!

Guess I better say something about this. Before he became a total self-parody and general all-around show biz phenomenon, Shatner liked to speak-sing in the hammiest manner possible. Believe it or not, he was considered a good actor then, and it's true he could be a pretty good journeyman actor if he put his mind to it, which he usually didn't. I remember watching the Ed Sullivan show (I'm dating myself here, but there's no one else available tonight) and my Dad said, "Look who's coming on. It's that William Shatner fellow. He's supposed to be the next big thing, you know." He did, amazingly, Hamlet's Soliloquy. I don't remember how well he did it, but he wore an outfit sort of like the Jolly Green Giant, a tunic and tights (green, I think, but - oh, I don't know! I had a b & w TV!). It brought to mind all the soliloquys he did on the show (damn, that word is hard to spell): every week he had Some Big Important Speech. "WE. . . the PEOPLE!!!", or "You're gonna be. . . just. . . like . . .them" (the "grups"). "No more blah blah blah!" "I'm a grup. And I. . . Want. . .To. . .Help. . . You." Looking back at some of his photos, he was quite a good-looking guy, with a hint of sweetness to soften his masculinity. He ran to fat however, not a good look in polyester, and in one show where both Kirk and Spock had their shirts off, Nimoy won hands down in the bodacious space-bod category. He was very hairy, but in a nice way. A good Jewish boy, but so's Shatner! Not everyone knows that about him. He grew up in Montreal in the Jewish quarter. He 'n' Nimoy are best friends. I'll try to find the video about that. It's cute and very touching. And blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahbl

Losing My Mind

Do I know anything about Dorothy Collins? No. Except that she kicks the hell out of this song. I heard Cleo Laine sing it many years ago and thought it was definitive, then heard it again this morning and collapsed into helpless tears.

You said you loved me. Or were you just being kind?

I could only write The Glass Character, which is 312 pages of unfulfilled love, because I know everything there is to know about Stephen Sondheim's paean to hopeless longing. I like the heroic, torch-song way she sings this. She just has so much voice, yet you get the sense she is only using about 3/4 of it. Oh God. I dim the lights. . .

I've lived inside that yearning, sometimes for years. I had this friend. . . he said he loved me; he was just being kind. I can't say more. I can't.

Did I somehow transfer that gut-twisting yearning to my main character, Muriel Ashford? Am I right now suffering the same anguish because nobody even wants to look at this novel, which I am sure is the best thing I will ever write?

Are you there?

Anyone?

Was I behind the barn door?

There are things I just don't get.

As a writer, getting publishers to give me the time of day is extremely difficult. It's even harder to get an agent, though people generally say things like, "Well, just find one and they'll do all the work for you."

I also hear at writers' conferences (and sometimes whispered like a dirty little secret by other authors) that you have to go about it a whole 'nother way.

You have to make a leap.

What's a leap? you may ask. I'm sitting here trying to figure it out.

I think the guy who was lecturing at the Surrey Conference (damned if I remember his name, his book, or even what he looked like) was trying to tell us that mailing a printed manuscript on 8 1/2" x 11" white bond paper, typed and double-spaced with a 1-1/2" margin around the edges, with a stamped self-addressed envelope included or we'll never hear from them again, is just a little bit antiquated and will probably get us nowhere.

But that's the required procedure on 90% of publisher's sites.

This fellow saw that approach as marching in place, or even going backwards. He said we have to make a leap. Didn't tell us how, of course. OK. So how do we do it?

This is the only thing I can think of. It's something you hear every day, in every field: "it's who you know". You have to make "contacts". In this age of the internet, it's supposed to be dead easy. You can have hundreds, thousands, or (if you're Charlie Sheen) even millions in the course of a day.

For writers, this creates a degree of queasiness. We've all been told to make contacts. At the aforesaid Surrey conference, the publisher of a small but prestigious literary press was heading for the ladies' room. A fellow participant grabbed my arm and said, "Look. There she goes. Go after her!"

I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Then there was the girl in orange. I don't remember her book, either, or her name, or anything about her except that she was wearing a shriekingly bright orange shirt and rainbow suspenders. She looked like a particularly unattractive clown. All that was missing was the Bozo nose and fright wig.

"I'm a shameless self-promoter, and you should be too," she told us. (And by the way, why is self-promoting so often tied to shame?). You have to get attention any way you can. Make sure you wear something that people will remember."

But orange isn't my colour. Is this why I'm not getting anywhere with the three completed and (I believe) publishable manuscripts I have in hand? I can't just toss them away or delete them. Sorry to say it, but my first two got raves. "Fiction at its finest", etc. etc. Unless these were lies, I have to presume I have something to offer.

Not long ago, I did manage to make some, maybe, contacts. It happened in a roundabout way. There was a flurry of emails exchanged, then - silence. The usual silence that falls when the other person realizes I might actually want something: for example, to get a publisher to acknowledge that I exist.

Apparently I broke some awful taboo, for the same thing happened with another potentially fantastic contact. This person - well, this was sort of like having God on your Facebook, but I can't name him because I know I'm not supposed to - loved my novel, even raved about it.

And then. . . the same fatal silence.

When I committed the awful faux pas of disclosing the fact that I'm not getting any attention for my wonderful novel whatsoever, and wondered if he had any suggestions, the line abruptly went dead. Though I am supposed to make contacts and "work" them until I get what I want, at the same time, I am NOT supposed to do that, because it's embarrassing and an admission of failure.

Contracts are supposed to drift through my mail slot all by themselves. Advances for $200,000.00 are supposed to just appear on my bank statement. Oops, we're rich!

I don't care about rich. But it seems like my professional need for someone to look at my novels is just wrong, somehow. The work should be its own reward. I should quit trying to suck up to people, for God's sake!

So I should make contacts, but not make contacts. I should know exactly how to "work" these nonexistent contacts so they don't abruptly hang up the phone as soon as I express some sort of need.

Why does the whole enterprise become so repellent, then? Why do I feel that I've:

(a) broken some sort of awful taboo by even trying to contact anyone,

(b) embarrassed myself by handling it all wrong (i.e. expressing the need to get my novel published),

(c) blown it by "losing" that giant marlin once and for all, and not even having a clue what I did that was so wrong so I can fix it if it ever happens again.

There are times when I just feel like nothing. I know I'm good, finally, and it took decades to get that far, to overcome the feeling that I wasn't up to scratch. But I seem to need a James Mason to sit in the club and listen to me sing and tell me, "You're good. Very good. In fact, you're far better than you know."

In reality, there are no Norman Maines around, not in my life anyway. Even if it did happen, I'd find some way to blow it, and not even know how or why.

I don't understand the deal. If a writer wants to become well-known, they're egotists, narcissists, greedy, and maybe even outright frauds.

But we don't expect a concert pianist to play in an empty hall. Or a painter to carefully hide all her canvasses in the attic (or just throw them away). The very idea of it is absurd.

Writing fiction is an extremely ancient art form, going back to the time when humans first became verbal. After the grunts and shouts resolved themselves into words, we developed the need to make story.

At first, no doubt, it went something like this. On a hunting expedition, the water buffalo pawed the ground, snorted and charged straight at the hunters. But Ugh was so fearless that he ran at him with a roar and skewered him through the heart with his flint-tipped spear. (Never mind that it was really Gronk who killed the buffalo.) And that night, over a scrumptious meal of water buffalo filet mignon, Ugh would begin to speak.

"The water buffalo charged at us, and soon we knew we would all be dead. The other hunters tried to hide in the bushes, but I took my spear and ran it through his heart. He groaned and fell down, and now we eat his flesh to honor his spirit. (He adjusts his new water buffalo robe.) I thank the gods that I was given so much courage and strength, for I have saved my people from certain starvation."

Yes, writers were bullshitters then, too.

But if Ugh sat by the fire all by himself, it would all be. . . well, kind of pointless. There would be less urgency for language to develop, allowing us to retell the tales of everyday struggle that eventually evolved into myth.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I want my place by the fire. I KNOW how to make story, damned good story, and nobody is interested and it's killing me by inches.

Like a fool, I keep trying, but it seems I can't put a foot right for all the landmines.

I don't want to be a star. But I sure would like to be born.

The Beatles - Rain (sing along with Paul)

The Beatles - Rain (turn up the volume)

If the rain comes

Rain fell on Skagit Valley.
It fell in sweeps and it fell in drones. It fell in unending cascades of cheap Zen jewelry. It fell on the dikes. It fell on the firs. It fell on the downcast necks of the mallards.
And it rained a fever. And it rained a silence. And it rained a sacrifice. And it rained a miracle. And it rained sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem.
This quote is the kind-of-a-thing that makes writers wanna give up forever. It's the feverish vision of a strange sort of man, half Byron, half Donald Duck (and half Betty Boop, probably, though we don't know where that half is stashed).

I was trying to find the whole quote, because I know it goes on. So I found my punky-smelling, beige-paged copy of Tom Robbins' classic Another Roadside Attraction, and began to dig.

Because I haven't even had my breakfast yet, for pity's sake, I gave up, but I did find this:

The afternoon sky looked like a brain. Moist Gray. Convoluted. A mad-scientist breeze probed at the brain, causing it to bob and quiver as if it were immersed in a tank of strange liquids. The Skagit Valley was the residue at the bottom of the tank. Toward dusk, the wind flagged, the big brain stiffened (mad doctor's experiment a failure), and ragged ribbons of Chinese mist unfurled in the valley. The blaring cries of. . .
OH FOR GOD'S SAKE. Mercy. Mercy.

And it rained an omen. And it rained a poison. And it rained a pigment. And it rained a seizure.

This reminds me of nothing more than Bob Dylan's A Hard Rain's a-gonna Fall: I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it/And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it. And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinking/But I'll know my song well before I start singing.
Why? Why all this? If you read this strange, incoherent blog at all (and who does? I often feel I am shouting into the abyss, and I am beginning to realize that my chronic failure as a writer is a sign of an intractible Fate), you'll know about the cedar boughs outside my office window. They are vanes, omens, semaphores. They hang in three-dimensional layers, a sweet intimate bough that sweeps on my left side, a less-visible perpendicular wodge of green that doesn't want to talk to me, and behind all that, a backdrop of bush that just goes on and on.

We live in suburbia, but at night comes the trilling and squealing of shabby-looking pack animals, the kind that search around for garbage in the night. At first I thought I was going crazy with the sound. My husband, half-deef, couldn't even hear it. It was only much later that I found out what they were.

Anyway, this isn't about that.

Rain sweeps and drones in Vancouver, a close enough cousin to Skagit Valley to pass one of those primordial DNA tests (if only by a whisker). Yes. We have this too:

Moisture gleamed on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their homes in dead tree trunks, clacked their clamshell teeth in the drowned doorways of forests. Rain hissed on the Freeway. It hissed at the prows of fishing boats. It ate the old warpaths, spilled the huckleberries, ran in the ditches. Soaking. Spreading. Penetrating.

Stop!

Pitiless, endless, suicidal, the rain takes up residence for some eight months of the year. No, twelve. Let's quit lying about this so we can go on living. As in northern Alberta, where I lived for many years, it can rain just like it can snow, any old time. In the middle of a grand day. It can split the merry blue sky like a railroad spike.

I like a storm. I love a storm when I am not in it. We don't get good hail around here (hail merry!), but in Alberta, once in a while a big satchelful of temporary diamonds would be dumped on the ground, and the air would hiss with ozone. The roof would thunder and dents would appear on the hoods of cars. Then a gleaming bounty lay on the ground, sublimating in sinuous vapors. Soon it'd just be that rice-paddy mush that's left over from a violent hunderstorm.

Here it's more temperate. Just a continuous pissing down on your dreams, a Monty Python foot crushing all ambition and hope.

I just realized something. Shakespeare bombed. He said something like, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", then goes on blathering about "the darling buds of May". Doesn't the idjit know when summer starts? There's a meteorologist on CTV news who knows better than that. And he's not the most celebrated writer who ever lived.

What's my point? Jesus! it's wet, and grey, and discouraging out there. I won't tell you what I've been going through with my work lately. It's the best of times, and the worst of times. Something spectacular might happen, but at the same time, it might be the end of everything.

Or, as usual, I will just be left hanging and face the same indifference, the averted face and cold shoulder, that my mother presented to me when I was born.

The opposite of love isn't hate. It's indifference.

The universe doesn't care. It's indifferent. But why do people have to be?
And what about my mother? My mother.

If the rain comes they run and hide their heads.
They might as well be dead.
If the rain comes, if the rain comes.
When the sun shines they slip into the shade
(When the sun shines down.)
And sip their lemonade.
(When the sun shines down.)
When the sun shines, when the sun shines.
Rain, I don't mind.
Shine, the world looks fine.
I can show you that when it starts to rain,
(When the Rain comes down.)
Everything's the same.
(When the Rain comes down.)
I can show you, I can show you.
Rain, I don't mind.
Shine, the world looks fine.
Can you hear me, that when it rains and shines,
(When it Rains and shines.)
It's just a state of mind?
(When it rains and shines.)
Can you hear me, can you hear me?
If the rain comes they run and hide their heads.
sdaeh rieht edih dna nur yeht semoc niar eht fI.
(Rain)
niaR.
(Rain)
enihsnuS.

Enter the Dragon

Today I found out that dragon floats are a traditional feature of Mardi Gras.

This one's a doozie, isn't it? I think it's all the same dragon.

I can only imagine the effort that went into constructing him. Do they keep him year to year, do you think? Where? Does anyone own a tarp that big?

Or does he fly off to some primordial Mardi Gras Dragonland to wait out another year?

Fallout

When I flipped my calendar today, I noticed that this isn't just any old Tuesday. Y'all know what Mardi Gras is, right? Those folks in Nawlins sure know how to put on a party.

Most of us have some vague idea that it's tied to Easter, but are not sure how.

Well, they'd be right. But more than that, it's tied to the cycles of the moon.

Ever wonder why Easter's on a different Sunday every year? Why doesn't it settle on one particular date, like Christmas or Ground Hog Day?

Because it falls on the first Sunday after the full moon, that's why, and cuz the moon's on a four-week cycle, sometimes it's earlier, and sometimes it's later. Ask the Chinese, who celebrate the Lunar New Year in a similar way.

You may ask: what does this have to do with Christianity? Nothing. What does it have to do with paganism and goddess-worship and Druids all that moon-related stuff? Plenty. The early Christians were smart enough to graft their big event of the year on a very old tree.

Before Mardi Gras even came along, it was called Shrove Tuesday. Most Christians don't have any idea what Shrove Tuesday actually means, except that there's always a pancake supper in the church basement, that damp place that always smells like the inside of a pumpkin, with undercooked pancakes on paper plates and kids spilling syrup and running around on a sugar high.

OK then, Shrove Tuesday is the beginning of six weeks of Lent. So what's Lent? Some people have some idea that it has to do with fasting and/or self-abnegation of some kind. Then comes Good Friday (the day Our Lord was nailed to a post to die: so why is it called Good?), and Easter Sunday, the miraculous day of Resurrection.

But it all has to be carefully timed to the cycles of the moon.

My bit of research into Shrove Tuesday was strange indeed. "Shrove" is the past tense of "shrive", which means to confess one's sins, to be penitent and grovel for forgiveness, and hopefully be absolved ("hey, I had a bad childhood"). If one is so absolved, they are described as "shriven". An unattractive word, if you ask me, resembling "shrivel", "shrine", and "shorn".

So what does this have to do with all those pancakes? Plenty. Before Lent, the traditional time of fasting, you had to use up every bit of fat in the house so the next six weeks would be a culinary disaster, everything sticking to the pan cuzzathefact they didn't have them-all Teflon thingy-dings then.

So yuz gorged yourself on sweet carbs on Fat Tuesday (which is a reference to the cooking fat, though in Nawlins it can have other meanings), then go into a long stretch of dire austerity. But I have a problem with all this. If you've been shriven already, why fast? Haven't you suffered enough?

It's hard to square stacks of oozing pancakes, Dixieland bands and drunken riots with the dreary plainsong of Gregorian chant. But after praying and fasting for seven or eight months, I think I've found a common point here.
Sex.
Illicit sex.

Can you guess what I mean?

Can you?

Can you guess why the Catholic Church is scrabbling so hard to apologize for all the horrendous abuse that has gone unchecked among their most valued clergymen for generations?

When you wake up from Mardi Gras, perhaps stuck to the floor with your own vomit, you may not be able to remember just who you were with last night. Isn't this something like those sweet little 8-year-old altar boys who try to push out of their minds a memory so horrific that they know no one will believe them?

I've got nothing against sex, folks, but it's too bad it's so often associated with drunken revelry, things you'd rather forget, and little boys and little girls trying not to scream because this kind of love is "special". So special that they dare not mention it to anyone at all.

There is a certain culling. The ones who can't make it. We don't know what's the matter with those people, why they can't get it together! Some of them even leave the church because entering the sanctuary makes them feel unaccountably sick. These are the ones that kind of sift down, doing horrible things like sticking needles in their arm, and eventually die.

Fallout.

I used to eat the bloody pancakes, pray out the bitter, penitent six weeks (never quite sure what I had done that was so wrong), and make sure I suffered terribly on Good Friday, until I realized one day that I had goddamn well suffered enough.
And that I wasn't going to be fallout. Not for anyone.