It's easily done, you just pick anyone

I can't understand

She let go of my hand

An' left me here facing the wall

I'd sure like to know

Why she'd go

But I can't get close to her at all

Though we kissed through the wild blazing nighttime

She said she would never forget

But now morning is clear

It's like ain't here

She just acts like we never have met.

It's all new to me

Like some mystery

It could even be like a myth

But it's hard to think on

That she's the same one

That last night I was with

From darkness, dreams are deserted

Am I still dreamin' yet ?

I wish she'd unlock

Her voice once and talk

'Stead of acting like we never met.

If she ain't feelin' well

Then why don't she tell

'Stead of turnin' her back to my face

Without any doubt

She seems too far out

For me to return to her chase

Though the night ran swirling and whirling

I remember her whispering yet

But evidently she don't

And evidently she won't

She just acts like we never have met.

If I didn't have to guess

I'd gladly confess

To anything I might've tried

If I was with her too long

Or have done something wrong

I wish she'd tell me what it is, I'll run and hide

Her skirt it swayed as a guitar played

Her mouth was watery and wet

But now something has changed

For she ain't the same

She just acts like we never have met.

I'm leavin' today

I'll be on my way

Of this I can't say very much

But if you want me to

I can be just like you

And pretend that we never have touched

And if anybody asks me, "Is it easy to forget ?"

I'll say, "It's easily done

You just pick anyone

And pretend that you never have met".

This came into my head today – it’s one of my favourite songs from one of my favourite albums, Another Side of Bob Dylan – because as with most of his stuff, it hits it right on the head. No obfuscation, no bullshitting, no fxxing around. One of the best things, the most unusual and powerful things about Dylan is his breathtaking honesty, though it is seldom mentioned by anyone, maybe not even consciously noticed.

Thus, if you analyze the words to Positively 4th Street, Dylan’s notorious diatribe of vengeance– well, guess what?  It isn’t. A diatribe. At. All. The song is merely a series of statements, true statements by the sound of them, strung together in the plainest English you ever heard:

You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend

When I was down, you just stood there grinnin’

You got a lot of nerve to say you have a helping hand to lend

You just want to be on the side that’s winnin’

When Dylan became impossibly famous in his early 20s, everybody really did want a piece of him, and it eventually became obscene. At heart he is introverted and hypersensitive, has few real friends, and mostly cleaves to his highly-protected family (who, by the way, have been seriously threatened by flaming psychotics like "Dylanologist" A. J. Weberman). If you get past its sardonic hipness and really listen to the song, you get the feeling that this all happened:  he really was used and abused this way, and with his usual who-gives-a-shit honesty he’s going to tell the world exactly what they did to him in those terse, compressed lines that are so characteristic of the most powerful poetry.

Like every other form of writing, poetry is reporting. And Dylan might just be the best reporter who ever lived.

People have argued over who is the “target” of Positively 4^th Street since the song came out in 1965. He recorded it right after his legendary gig at the Newport Folk Festival: you know, the one where he “went electric”, singing two of his ten or so songs with an amplified guitar and a rhythm section. They didn’t just boo him then: they booed him through an entire tour, every time he pulled out that electric guitar. And he kept on singing.

So there were plenty of potential targets for the varnish-stripping Dylan honesty, among them numerous folkie has-beens and never-weres, parasites trying to suck away his vital force as he struggled to be reborn. Some even think it’s about Joan Baez, but frankly, given the way he coat-tailed on her fame in the early ‘60s, she had even more reason to sing that song to HIM. No, I think it’s aimed at that nauseating sycophant and self-styled hipster/flamboyant creep, Richard Farina, a Dylan wanna-be who married  Baez’s 17-year-old sister Mimi strictly to get a piece of the action with Joan.

So let’s get into this one. It has one of those twisty Dylan titles: I Don’t Believe You. But what is it really about? It’s about being cut so dead by someone you like or love that they won’t even acknowledge you’ve met.

Hey, who is this guy.

Are you talking to me?

What? . . . Do I know you?

It’s easily done, you just pick anyone.  Let’s pick someone you HAVE known for years, even had a close relationship with, whether professional or personal.

At some point – well, sometimes it’s just totally baffling. No discernible reason at all, or perhaps things just get a little “thick”, a little less than jolly and easy.

A scum or a fog or a – something – something toxic begins to form.

And you try to clear the air - and you try – and –

It isn’t so much being “ignored” or even having the other person pretend you never have met, which is devastating enough. It’s that sense of – uhh, is there another person in the room? Somebody over there, maybe? Ah, no – nobody there –  (whew).

The opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference. The opposite of acknowledgement is obliviousness. It’s easily done: you just do nothing! Try to call them on it, and all sorts of generic excuses pop up that are meant to be blandly accepted: “Oh! NOW I know why you didn’t answer my email/phone message, you know the one, that message that laid my guts open and made me vulnerable enough to risk everything I had. You didn’t answer me because you were Busy That Day. You were away from your desk.”

No. You were not. Away. From. Your Desk. You made this up on the spot to make it easier for YOU, and if I don’t accept it or if I try to call you on it, I will get some version of “how can you be so cruel? How can you even think of such a thing?”

I can be so cruel as to think, because it is TRUE.

But though it may look like you suddenly shunned me for no reason, it will eventually come to light that there was a reason. You didn’t answer me because I embarrassed you. I embarrassed you because I cared so intensely, and you didn’t. I wanted to know what made things go so wrong between us, to try to understand it or at least get some sort of dialogue going. But you can’t have a dialogue if the other person won’t even acknowledge your existence.

As I get older, I see the real dynamics between people, the way the endless games are played, and it sickens me. I open myself, show my belly, roll all over the floor, longing for someone/anyone to hear me, understand me, or at least live on the same planet as me, and it all echoes back at me as if nobody is there. At. All.

The opposite of love. Dylan almost makes light of this, though not quite. It’s not nice not to be acknowledged. Especially it’s not nice if you’ve gutted yourself in order to be understood, and gotten an indifferent silence in reply. Silence isn’t nice when it’s malignant like that. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the human brain has a tendency to fill it in. And not with the sweetest thoughts.

When people don’t return your phone calls/emails, and it’s happened to me a lot since I decided to fall on my sword by being a novelist, it’s like being stood up on a date. It doesn’t feel nice. The person doing the standing-up should be feeling guilty and bad for letting you down. They don’t. They don’t feel anything. Or they’re busy doing something else, probably having much more fun than they would have had with you. YOU feel bad. YOU feel embarrassed, unacknowledged, dumped. You’re sitting there in a bar or a coffee shop alone, being glanced at, and you feel embarrassed, shamed. You went out of your way. You put your pretty dress on. You told the guy you liked him. Loved him? If you say anything to anyone – but no. THAT truly exposes you as a loser. All you’ll get is pity, or “oh, come on, don’t be so sensitive”.

We must hold our Winner mask in front of our faces at all times. If it drops, we’ll be under attack. Or underacknowledged. Or, perhaps, not even acknowledged at all.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Growing tired of cat grass

(Please note. This is from a site called Sproutpeople.org (link below) that sells seeds for various sprouting things.  I Googled "how to grow cat grass" because my cat loves to eat or at least chew on the ends of grass, and when I grow him a pot of it, it lasts about a week and a half, then dies. Then I have to start all over again, germinating a new pot. I was looking for cat grass with greater longevity, and I came across these astonishing instructions, which I do not expect you to read! Please don't try. But you get the idea. Kitties were never so spoiled as this. It's like starting your own grow-op, in fact, I wish they'd give me instructions for THAT because it would be far more lucrative/worth my time than this. Hey, I'm not dissing this, I'm not. Just saying it's a lot more detailed and intensive than what I'm doing, which is whack some oat grains into a pot of dirt, water it, then wait.)

Home

Growing Cat Grass

Soak 8 - 12 hours
Rinse / Drain 2 times per day
Plant Day 2
Harvest 6 - 10 days

Wheat, Oats, Rye, Barley, Flax

Salad for your all pets! Our special non-puking formula has pleased many thousands of cats and cat people since 1993. It has also pleased rabbits, dogs, guinea pigs, iguanas, turtles and many more of our other-than-human friends.

All of the seeds in Kat Grass come from sources which are certified organic.

GROWING INSTRUCTIONS

How much you soak depends on the area you are planting - see here. Yields approximately as much Grass (by weight) as Grains planted.

Our Instructions and Notes (below) use Purple Text when referring to growing Grass on a medium other then soil.

Pre-Sprout

Grass will grow much better if you sprout it prior to planting!

Put seed* into a bowl or your Sprouter. Add 2-3 times as much cool (60-70°) water. Mix seeds up to assure even water contact for all. Allow seeds to Soak for 8-12 hours.

Empty the seeds into your sprouter if necessary. Drain off the Soak water. Use it to water plants, or whatever you like. It has nutrients in it.

Rinse thoroughly with cool (60-70°) water and Drain thoroughly.

Set anywhere out of direct sunlight and at room temperature (70° is optimal) between Rinses. This is where your sprouts do their growing. We use a counter top - in the corner of our kitchen, but where the sprouter won't get knocked over by cats, dogs, kids or us. We don't mind the indirect sunlight or the 150 watts of incandescent light, because light just does not matter much. A plant can only perform photosynthesiswhen it has leaves. Until then light has little if any effect. Don't hide your sprouts.

Rinse and Drain again in 8-12 hours. And, perhaps one more... Rinse and Drain in 8-12 hours. And, conceivably one more... Rinse and Drain in 8-12 hours.

The goal is to have a just the hint of a Root - or a very short Root before planting. Most of the seeds will have that hint, or have sprouted tiny (1/16 - 1/8 inch) roots after just 1 or 2 Rinse and Drain cycles.

Planting

Thoroughly moisten the soil. Allow puddles to dry. Sometimes you may need to use your fingers to make sure the soil is moist all the way down to the bottom of the tray. Water, mix, water, mix, etc. Sometimes you don't have to do that - it depends mostly on how dry the soil is before you begin moistening it.

Baby Blanket/Tencel: Prepare the pad: Cut it to fit your Tray if necessary. Soak it in water or better yet, Kelp Fertilizer enriched water (You don't NEED fertilizer for Grass, but we sometimes use it when we grow without soil.) until thoroughly saturated (fold it up and push it into the liquid - use a pot or bowl or something similar to hold it). Unfold it and re-fold differently or do whatever makes sense - the goal is to get the pad THOROUHGLY soaked. Spread the wet pad across the bottom of your Planting Tray.Proceed...

Coconut Coir/Vermiculite: Coconut Coir is our all-time favorite medium. It is absolutely lovely to work with! Both Coconut Coir and Vermiculite absorbs liquid so readily and holds it so supremely that you need little of it. We use 3 Cups for an 10 x 10 inch tray and 6 Cups for an 10 x 20 inch tray. If you're using another tray, make it at least 1/4 - 1/2 inch deep. Spray water evenly across the surface then spread it out as evenly as you can. We like to use Kelp Fertilizer enriched water (You don't NEED fertilizer forGrass, but we sometimes use it when we grow without soil.) so we just pour it on until thoroughly saturated and then spread it out. If you are using one of our Tray Sets, you can use the Drip Tray to help. The amount of liquid to use is this: Vermiculite - a little more than one quart for an 10 x 20 inch tray. You don't want more than a little left in the Drip Tray. Pour off what water remains above the ridges of the Drip Tray.
Coconut Coir: Follow the directions on our Coir page or the package. You may mix in 20-25% Earthworm Castings for nitrogen, but Grass doesn't demand it. Proceed...

Spread seeds evenly on thoroughly moistened soil or medium. Rinse your seeds one last time and then sprinkle them across the planting medium. Spread them out as evenly as you can. We use a lot of grain and though some literature will tell you that your seeds should not ever lay atop each other, we have found from years of experience and thousands of Trays of Grass grown that that is bunk! You will learn for yourself that Grass produces a plant that takes up less room than the grain did, and so to maximize your yield your seeds must lay atop each other to some degree. The thing to watch is this: If you find mold or fungal problems in your Grass then lessen the amount of grain you plant. The hotter/more humid your climate is the more of an issue the mold/fungus is. As always, you need to adapt to your own climate and seasonal conditions. And learn as you go - this is really easy and fun stuff to learn! (Note: emphasis mine).

Cover the planted tray with an inverted tray (the Cover Tray) - to keep light out and moisture in. By inverted I mean that the lip of the Cover Tray rests directly on the lip of the Planting Tray - so the bottom of the Cover Tray is facing up.

Note: Your covering tray should have holes or slits in it so that some air circulation exists. Without this very minimal air flow you might have mold or fungal problems.

Place in a low-light, room temperature location. 70° is always optimal but Grass will grow very well in cooler temperatures also.

Watering

Water lightly once or twice a day. The goal is to keep the sprouts moist until their roots bury themselves in the soil/medium - at which point your goal is to keep the soil/medium moist. Spraying the sprouts is best - whether you use a Spray Bottle or sink/faucet sprayer - just try to make sure that every sprout gets rinsed and quenched until they bury their roots. You may also use some Kelp Fertilizer if you like.

Water the medium. Once the roots are buried, all you need to do is keep the medium moist - the seeds and subsequent Grass will get the moisture they need through their roots. Water from the side if possible, to prevent injuring the tender blades.

The Soilless alternative. Baby Blanket and Tencel will dry out more quickly than soil in most circumstances, so you should either water more often or experiment with our somewhat risky trick:

Use the Drip Tray to hold some water. The roots will actually sit in this, so don't go crazy - too much can drown your plants and/or lead to fungal or mold problems. Just leave as much water as the Grass can drink in a day - and then add more the following day. The amount is dependant on the climate (humidity especially) you're growing in, so you'll have to learn this for yourself. We suggest that you start with 1-2 cups in the Drip Tray. Lift the Planting Tray to see how much is left after 4, 8 and 12 hours. If the Drip Tray is dry add more water - if there is still water 24 hours later then cut back the next time you add water. Pretty simple really, and not as risky as we make it sound - it is really a time saver and can produce happier healthy grass. Leaving too much water for too long will lead to funkiness. The roots can go brown, and the smell will be unpleasant. Just keep an eye open and use common sense. Be the plant!

Once again, we do recommend Kelp Fertilizer enriched water for soilless growers. Soil growers may use it too of course, but the soil does have some nutrients already, so it is not nearly as important for you. If you are using Coconut Coir and have added Earthworm Castings you have no need for kelp.

Vermiculite holds water better than anything except Coconut Coir, but the same method works for it: Use the Drip Tray to hold some water. The roots will eventually grow into this, so don't go crazy - too much can drown your plants and/or lead to fungal or mold problems. Just leave as much water as the Grass and Vermiculite or Coconut Coir can drink in a day and then add more the following day. The amount is dependant on the climate (humidity especially) you're growing in, so you'll have to learn this for yourself. We suggest that you start with 1-2 cups in the Drip Tray. Lift the Planting Tray to see how much is left after 4, 8 and 12 hours. If the Drip Tray is dry add more water - if there is still water 24 hours later then cut back the next time you add water. Pretty simple really, and not as risky as we make it sound - it is really a time saver and produces happier healthy Grass. Use Kelp Fertilizer too if you're using Vermiculite, or didn't enrich your Coir with Earthworm Castings. We probably give more water than is necessary, but we end up with great crops and the Grass keeps growing even after we cut it - even if we don't add water daily.

Greening your Grass

Uncover your Grass on day 3, 4 or 5 - or whenever it's 1-2 inches tall. We usually wait until it pushes the covering tray up (it really will do that - it is remarkable!)

Move to a well lit location If you use direct sunlight (a very good idea for Grass) be prepared to do more watering. Every crop needs more watering when grown in a brighter, hotter location. Keep it moist by watering the soil/medium daily. Watch it grow. It takes about 4 or 5 more days to get to....

Harvest

Harvest by cutting the Grass just above the soil/medium when the Grass is 6 or more inches tall (actually height is just a matter of yield - you can cut it any time you want to).

We believe that you will get the best flavor and nutrition from freshly cut Grass. We cut JUST prior to juicing and we feel the difference! But, you are better off juicing week old Grass than no Grass at all, so do what you must! Drink More Juice!

If you are going to store your crop: During the final 8-12 hours minimize the surface moisture of your Grass - it will store best in your refrigerator if it's dry to the touch. So if you water try to keep the water off the plants - just water the soil/medium.

Transfer your crop to a plastic bag or the sealed container of your choice. We offer a great Produce Storage Bag which extends the shelf life of all produce stored within it. Whatever you use, put your crop in your refrigerator. Use it/juice it as soon as possible.

Amount of Seed to Use

If using Sproutpeople's Single Harvest Pack - use the whole bag on our 5 inch tray (or similar).

Or Use: 1/4 - 1/3 Cups Dry Grain for a 5 inch square Tray. 1 - 2 Cups dry grain for an 10 inch square Tray. 2 - 4 Cups dry grain for for an 10 inch x 20 inch Tray.

The surest way to know what amount of seed to use: Spread dry seed on the bottom of your Tray so that the seed is spread evenly but densely.

(Kitty IS, of course, worth all this. But I'm not likely to try it any time soon. Oats in dirt, that will have to do.

P. S. Here is a rather interesting post, Why Do Cats Eat Grass. The whole site is written in similar fashion. I'm not sure what language this was in originally, but it sure is entertaining. Perhaps it's one of those Google translations.)

Why Do Cats Eat Grass? Cats should stand a little on why eating grass. Because you know why your cat eating grass. You may have an idea about whether it is normal or disease.


Some cat owners may be amazed when they see the grass in the garden of the cat ate with great appetite.Animal behavioral scientists have searched for years for the underlying causes of the eating habits of carnivorous cat grass.

Vitamins they receive from herbs they eat cats (folic acid) helps the digestive system. Cats are vomiting after eating a large majority of grass. Remove the ball down when birds would have bothered stomach. Grass eating is also another benefit laxative effect. The intestines from the stomach allows the ball down to the more comfortable excretion. The general belief that they ate grass for cats is sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes stomach that just because they like the taste. Hair pulling the ball independently sore throat, eat grass to vomit sick cats as well.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

My Day

It went kind of like this.

The worst doesn't happen - except when it does

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/14/behind-the-trump-phenomenon

Herein is a link to a pretty good piece in the New Yorker about the Trump phenomenon. I don't know if I have anything more to add. My husband, who is far more politically astute than me, said "he's the best thing that ever happened to the Democrats" and "he will leave the Republican party in ruins, so they will have to rebuild out of the rubble and become a viable party again." Let's hope he's right.

I get frightened at the things that are happening, but if I say much about it I'm a party pooper, fearful, a depressive, and blah blah blah. I am a human being in fear because of what I see all around me. And yet. I am mindful of the fact that when I wrote a starkly honest post about these fears, I lost four longtime followers within a few hours. I didn't even know my followers followed me, but apparently they do when the message is too dire, then decide to hang up the phone. Does this hurt? What do you think? I love my readers, even if I don't know them, and abandonment is always hard.

The worst doesn't usually happen, except when it does (Hiroshima, Nazi Germany, Hurricane Katrina, and all the school shootings that I can no longer keep track of - and this is by no means a comprehensive list, just what popped into my brain in the first few seconds). Am I tempted to despair? You bet  I am. On a personal level, I cope by cleaving very closely to my family and all its beloved aspects, my 40+-year marriage, and even - gulp - my writing, though I just received some news that makes me wonder if I should laugh or cry.

The Glass Character, the novel I have created a whole blog for, a whole Facebook page for, and to which I surrendered my hope and my heart, sold three copies in all of 2015. This is not just a failure, this is a literary catastrophe. To sell this number, you'd have to post vitriolic, insulting tirades every day telling everyone they're full of shit and should not go near my book. It is barely possible, but it says so right on my royalty statement, which is several hundred dollars in the red. I literally owe my publisher some pretty big bucks for failing on this level.

I'm trying to figure it out. I wasn't going to say anything. Everyone says, of course, that failure is no disgrace, that it is a badge of honour because "you tried" and learned something and should just try, try again. OK then: if it is indeed no disgrace, here goes, I'm going to write about it right now!

From observation and personal experience, however, I think the opposite is true.  I have observed that failure blights your personal vibe and renders you unwashed, a pariah, box office poison. It does. You have to play it down. One costly mistake can be the end of everything. I've written about this before, risking party-pooperhood again.

I'm going to excerpt something I sent my publisher, because this blog is my refuge now and the only thing I am going to be writing for any sort of public consumption from now on.

"I’ve been going over and over this issue in my head and wondering whether to address it will make things better or worse, but leaving it alone will be too painful for me, so I guess I had better make an attempt.

I received my royalty statement yesterday and saw that my novel sold three copies in all of 2015. This seemed like an impossibility to me, either a mistake or probably the worst sales record in publishing history. I did not expect my novel to break sales records, as my other two novels were modest sellers in spite of outstanding reviews. This novel, for whatever reason, did not get reviewed at all and did not get many of those all-important five-star blurbs on Amazon because I was not able or willing to enter the barter system (I’ll five-star yours if you’ll five-star mine) in order to procure them.

I am saying this not to be defensive or apologetic, and I know in the long run it won’t make any difference, but to say I can just brush off this magnitude of failure in my life’s work is unrealistic. I don’t know why, but perhaps because of sheer loneliness I just have to say something. One can’t reveal this kind of thing publicly because in this era of social media, one must always save face and put one’s best foot forward, and this face is just about the worst I’ve seen! You have to be a success to be a success.

Though due to health/family/financial constraints I was unable to put together a major book tour, which would have involved trying to get myself invited to events when no one had heard of my work, I did do what I could locally to promote the book and had a successful and very enjoyable launch. I set up a Facebook page specifically for the novel and have kept it up, and have been writing a blog called The Glass Character since 2010. I had gained a number of contacts, or I hoped I did, in the silent film world, and approached them with the book to see if there was interest. This included Gerry Orlando (who runs the San Francisco silent film festival), Jeffrey Vance (Lloyd biographer), Rich Correll, a Hollywood film producer/director who knew Harold Lloyd personally and who phoned me out of the blue from Los Angeles to tell me he loved the excerpts I sent him and wanted to see the whole book (never to hear from him again – he stopped answering my emails), Kevin Brownlow who is the world’s foremost expert on silent film and was generous enough to write a blurb (the one person who has been good to me and kept up a correspondence), the Lloyd family, including Suzanne Lloyd who is CEO of Harold Lloyd Entertainment, a few other HL biographers, and – well, is there much point to this? Obviously it was futile and led to no interest at all. And I am aware the whole thing was long-shot: I am not naïve about it.

I know the publishing world has changed a lot, and I must not be a publicity genius or this never would have happened, but three copies. Though there is a lot of lip service paid to “failure is good, it’s great, it’s how you learn”, it is socially stigmatized and shameful. It actually is, and the repercussions can be fatal to a writing career, especially if your books tank at the box office three times in a row. If you somehow manage to pick yourself up and go on to great success, it looks fine on your resume, you’re seen as the comeback kid and praised, but that’s not going to happen here because I can’t and won’t go through this again.

I don’t know what I was expecting here, but I will tell you I feel really badly that you took such a bath on this. You ended up seriously in the hole with me, and it feels awful. I will pay back what I owe, and I am not kidding, I will do that if it will help, bad as it feels. I know that’s not what is done, but I will do it because this is probably an unusual case and small publishers are struggling hard enough as it is. An author should not “earn” minus hundreds of dollars for her book – it is either funny or baffling or just heartbreaking. I do not ever intend to offer my fiction for publication again, I mean anywhere, as I am unable to detach myself from “how it did”, though I guess I am supposed to.

I don’t know how to play this game, obviously, if that’s what it is, though I know it shouldn’t be. Canadian literature is honoured worldwide as being of the highest quality. I cannot forget that my first novel received over 25 reviews, almost all of them very positive, and that my second  novel Mallory was favorably compared in the Globe and Mail to the work of Alice Munro, a Nobel prize-winner. OK, am I bragging here or just scrambling for points? I shouldn’t do that, obviously, and yet I shouldn’t NOT do it.  I didn’t do enough of it or I would have sold more than three books. There is something so awkward about being self-serving enough to push your book aggressively, because it is seen as just so un-Canadian and you can expect a lot of putdowns for it. Yet at one and the same time, if you don’t do it you’re missing the boat.

I have to tell you that writing this novel, which now must be its own reward, was one of the best experiences I’ve had in my writing experience (I guess I can’t say career). Having it accepted by Thistledown was nothing short of thrilling, and I had high hopes for it. I appreciate the faith you had in me to give me this chance.  It had been a long time since my last book came out, however, and in that time I had unwittingly morphed into a dinosaur, with my past work seen as almost a liability: I was that fatal thing, an “old school writer”. It seemed that suddenly everyone was an author, and some real crap was hitting the fan (Fifty Shades, etc.) and becoming bestseller material. Since I wasn’t sure how to navigate these waters, I did what I could and sold three books and now wonder how that even could have happened.

It’s a little late for a post-mortem, I guess, or what I could or should or couldn’t or shouldn’t have done. But it is too bad I had to agonize about whether I should even speak to this or just zip it up, keep it to myself and try to carry on. This is embarrassing, if not humiliating, and I do have my pride. There is no way to win this at this point, or contemplate what I might have done or should have done or shouldn’t have done, and it is really a very disappointing way to end my fiction-writing career, but here it must end. The other day I made a passing reference to “writing another novel” and my husband got a look on his face, not just pained but anguished, and said, “Margaret, please, please don’t do that.”  He was being truly supportive of me in saying this.

Thistledown gave me an opportunity here, perhaps a roll of the dice, but for that I am still grateful in spite of how it turned out. I hope this isn’t seen as a rant, which it is not meant to be, but a cri du coeur, just something I had to say because not saying it was killing me. I do appreciate your reading this, and I don’t ask for you to try to make it better, but I guess I just had to say it.

Again, I am grateful for the chance to work with you."

Why do I do this, publicize and broadcast such a jaw-dropping failure? Because I'm sick of hiding it. As Bob Dylan once said, "When you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose." (He also said "he not busy being born is busy dying," and today I'm not sure which one I am.) It's true. I'm not trying to "gain" anything here either. Maybe it's a bit of a cautionary tale, however. I do think I'm a good writer and don't need to be bolstered. But I have long believed that a storyteller needs an audience. We don't expect a concert pianist who has trained for ten years to play in an empty hall, but when writers want readers, they're seen as egotists. If they DON'T get that readership, they're seen as failures.

I love the book world anyway, because I love books, damn it, damn it all, and now here I am near tears. Everyone keeps saying "but only the format is changing, books will always be books". Books will always be books if they are READ, but if they aren't read they're objects lying around the house, just things to be dusted, or - worse - pulped. My second book was recently pulped, meaning that no copies now exist of it, nor ever will. It has turned back into a tree, which is maybe some kind of backhanded magic.

I can't unwrite. I can't untell. I can't unwish. I can't undream. I can't unhope or go back to age eight and say to that eager little girl, "no, Margaret, you can't write books, not because you 'can't' but because no one will ever read them." 

But I can stop, and I have stopped already, I won't do this any more. I guess I will still feed this blog because, for the most part, I enjoy doing it. It's a form of play for me, of recreation, and (sometimes) a way to rejoice or lament or just write about something I really care about. Sometimes I get ten views, sometimes (well, once) 100,000, but I'd keep on even if I got three views a year. Or, probably, none.

So that's something, isn't it? Is the dream still alive? No, it's dead, and now I must bury it. I will never again be a published novelist. Is there a smaller number than three copies a year? Two? One? Zero? I don't think I can get anyone on-board with figures like that.

But since I need to write to survive psychologically, that part of it will go on. When I look back on my life right this minute, all I can remember is sadness, sorrow, slights, people being dismissive or contemptuous or saying mean things to me, tears and embarrassment. I can't remember any of the good stuff because I'm in a mini-depression over the three copies. No one has to read this, however! But it's out there, hanging in the wind like some strange, dream-shaped chime, a glass chime with glass characters that reflect my all-too-breakable glass heart.

Dancing mania: they laugh! They dance! They scream!

Ye-e-e-e-s, it's that wacky bunch of Pentecostals, the Kenneth Hagin gang! They dance! They laugh! They scream! They roll around on the floor! It's hard to believe that religious people can behave this way, but it sure looks like they do. To me it has a kind of sexual component to it that I can't quite put my finger on. The Shakers, known for their complete abstinence from all sexual activity (which is why the sect died out quite a long time ago) used to whirl around and dance madly when overtaken by the Spirit, but it was not quite like this. Nothing else is quite like this. This is a bunch of adults acting like idiots, behaving more immaturely than toddlers who generally have far better self-control. The idea is that God is filling them with the Holy Ghost to the point that they start to flail around involuntarily, but I don't believe it. Most of it looks faked. There are people who get up and dance around and then go and sit down again, their part of the performance over.

My favourite moment is around the 9:03 mark, where a guy rolls down the stairs, leaving a gun sitting on the step behind him. Obviously it fell out of his pocket as he was holy-rollin' along like that. Personally, I'd be scared of an evangelical who was armed. And wouldn't it be interesting to do a weapons count in this crowd. How many are exercising their Constitutional right to bear arms? All the time, I mean, even in a religious meeting? But maybe they need to be armed here more than anywhere else.

I am at the point in my life now where I don't understand religion at all. And this from someone who was a lay minister and Bible teacher for 15 years. No kidding. But if this is Christianity, then forget it. These are not Christians. They're crazy in the head to begin with, and fork over all their hard-earned money to fuckwits like Hagin. The bizarre thing is that there are tons of "straight" videos of Hagin giving sermons that are, while not exactly my cup of evangelical tea, almost sane. They're in plain English anyway, with no barking or guffawing. He had quite a reputation as a sort of charismatic Billy Graham type, until his ministry took a turn for the supremely silly.

This laughing/flailing idiocy was originally called the Toronto Blessing and took place in a church near an airport. Maybe all the noise drove them to it, who knows. The Hagin videos were made some time in the '90s, and it would be interesting to know where these people are now. How many of them stayed with it. Or if this sort of orgy still goes on, or was it just a fad? I also wonder what happens in the hotel rooms where the participants stay during these big crusade thingammies. I just think it could turn sexual at the drop of someone's pants.

ADDENDA.

Tanganyika laughter epidemic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Tanganyika laughter epidemic of 1962 was an outbreak of mass hysteria – or mass psychogenic illness (MPI) – rumored to have occurred in or near the village of Kashasha on the western coast of Lake Victoria in the modern nation of Tanzania (formerly Tanganyika) near the border of Uganda.

The laughter epidemic began on January 30, 1962, at a mission-run boarding school for girls in Kashasha. The laughter started with three girls and spread haphazardly throughout the school, affecting 95 of the 159 pupils, aged 12–18. Symptoms lasted from a few hours to 16 days in those affected. The teaching staff were not affected but reported that students were unable to concentrate on their lessons. The school was forced to close down on March 18, 1962.

After the school was closed and the students were sent home, the epidemic spread to Nshamba, a village that was home to several of the girls.  In April and May, 217 people had laughing attacks in the village, most of them being school children and young adults. The Kashasha school was reopened on May 21, only to be closed again at the end of June. In June, the laughing epidemic spread to Ramashenye girls’ middle school, near Bukoba, affecting 48 girls.

The school from which the epidemic sprang was sued; the children and parents transmitted it to the surrounding area. Other schools, Kashasha itself, and another village, comprising thousands of people, were all affected to some degree. Six to eighteen months after it started, the phenomenon died off. The following symptoms were reported on an equally massive scale as the reports of the laughter itself: pain, fainting, flatulence, respiratory problems, rashes, attacks of crying, and random screaming. In total 14 schools were shut down and 1000 people were affected.

Dancing Mania

Dancing mania (also known as dancing plague, choreomania, St John's Dance and, historically, St. Vitus' Dance) was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected men, women, and children, who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion. One of the first major outbreaks was in Aachen, Germany, in 1374, and it quickly spread throughout Europe; one particularly notable outbreak occurred in Strasbourg in 1518, France.

Affecting thousands of people across several centuries, dancing mania was not an isolated event, and was well documented in contemporary reports. It was nevertheless poorly understood, and remedies were based on guesswork. Generally, musicians accompanied dancers, to help ward off the mania, but this tactic sometimes backfired by encouraging more to join in. There is no consensus among modern-day scholars as to the cause of dancing mania.

The several theories proposed range from religious cults being behind the processions to people dancing to relieve themselves of stress and put the poverty of the period out of their minds. It is, however, thought to be as a mass psychogenic illness in which the occurrence of similar physical symptoms, with no known physical cause, affect a large group of people as a form of social influence.

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