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?

Roughing it in the bush

I'm not much of an outdoors person, but I must say, some of my encounters on my Alberta holiday were interesting (especially the very tall Mountie). It's also very hard to catch a moose in uniform. Pretty cool.

Bugle boy

"I tip a wapiti" is a perfect palindrome, and the core of a much longer one I've lost track of. (A palindrome is a large arena full of one-humped camels, or Alaskan ex-governors or something.) Though I have no desire to tip one of these magnificent creatures (after all, the service is terrible!), I wouldn't mind if one of them would tip me, or at least blow his bugle for me.

On our recent driving trip through the Rocky Mountains, the bad faerie rubber-stamped us, and all sorts of stuff went wrong. Nobody died, nothing like that, but still, it was stuff. A long-anticipated visit to a world-class dinosaur museum in Drumheller, Alberta, was aborted by a sign that read, "Closed on Mondays." (Mondays? . . . Mondays???)

A long construction detour stuck us in six-inch mud ruts and coated our vehicle in thick brown slime. "Falling-off-the-bone" ribs from a promising roadside restaurant had the taste and consistency of shoe leather, and the accompanying chicken breast had been precooked, frozen, doused with bottled barbecue sauce, then shoved in the microwave for 20 minutes. (Someone should write a book about disappointing restaurant meals: the prickly, angry sense of being ripped off, the powerlessness of not being able to fix it, the sensory anticipation raised and then dashed, the dismay and even shame at trusting that this place would live up to its promise. Not to mention good old-fashioned visceral disgust at being faced with inedible glop, or - worse - stuff that's edible, but only just.)

Nevertheless, there were moments, Rocky Mountain rainbows glimpsed: and I have always loved rainbows, I admit it. In Banff, we sighted some undersized male elk by the side of the road: like fat deer with bigger horns. Knowing they were out of the running, they sparred half-heartedly for the tourists. But magic lay in wait. After a too-big dinner in the enchanted town of Jasper, we were driving back to our chalet (OK, it was a fourplex, but still very cozy), and saw cars backed up and pulled over.

"Shit," Bill said. "More construction."

But it wasn't. Breathless travellers had their telephotos trained on a huge bull wapiti, with a rack on him like I'd never seen before. He made a show of wariness, his monarch head jerking up from time to time to interrupt his grazing. But there was no doubt that he owned the patch of ground he stood on.

Then he tipped back his wapiti head, opened his mouth and broadcast an unearthly - what was it? A goblin playing an oboe? The smell of rushing wild streams and fresh-cut cedar rendered into sound? A squealing upsurge of harmonics the colour of the aurora, designed to grasp and pull the ovaries of bawling elk-virgins?

Whatever it was, whale-squeal or loon-shiver, his primal music made my hair stand on end. When Mr. Elk casually sauntered across the highway, stopping once to bugle again, we were rapt, rooted, transfixed, and swearing a blue streak because we hadn't bothered to bring the camera to dinner. (Nothing good would ever happen on this trip, would it?) So, no video, no majestic stills, nothing. This would have to be the one that got away.

How does a mere ungulate (how I love the word!) produce such virtuosic woodwind arpeggios? It takes Tibetan monks 50 years to learn how to chant in overtones. And here this big ol' fur rug on hooves is doing it with no study at all. It's artless art. If Felix Mendelssohn breathed into a glass clarinet in a state of total weightlessness, it still wouldn't come close: wouldn't auger the soul in the same excruciatingly lovely way.

Wapiti

i tipa

wipitika

a tika tipa tika

wapitapi

tikatipa

wapataki

tipa

tipa

tippa

tip -

. . . ahhh.

TRIUMPH OF THE WILL (RECENTLY FOUND DIRECTOR'S CUT)

Historical footage. Disturbing, but an important reminder that National Socialism is once more on the rise.

Holiday/Holy Day

Since this won't align in the centre (er!), I'll just write from the centre too.

The origin of holiday was Holy Day.

Nothing much holy about it any more,

unless you decide to go to the Holy Land,

a trip I've never understood

because it always seems to be undertaken by churchy retirees

who then inflict their pictures ad nauseam, complete with

running commentary:
"Look, there's the head of Jesus!"

Nothing is questioned,

not even seventeen femur bones of Lazarus

or somebody.

I once saw a mummified Pope, but I forget

where it was, maybe

Venice. I loved

Venice

in spite of its stinking waters

and guys in striped shirts with barge poles,

but Florence (Firenze!) blew me away

with its San Marco, its

gold-lined cathedral.

If God lived anywhere,

it was here.

David, a must-see

was extremely tall

with a huge head

and (in spite of all the fuss)

a very small penis

he was out of proportion

because everyone was looking "up"

This year it's a driving trip to Alberta

a place we lived a long time ago

and didn't see:

Moses mountains

bighorn sheep all over the road

moose and elk and the occasional shy white

mountain goat

and even, once,

a wolf bounding out in front of our car

on the highway at night,

its feral eyes lit up like incandescent disks.

I want to get away from it all,

the whining I've done lately, which makes me ashamed,

for surely the only direction is forward.

They say

and maybe "they" are right

that a vacation

(origin: vacate or vacant or evacuate or vacuum cleaner - heh-heh, sorry, I made that one up)

that a vacation, no matter how modest

is a way of hitting the reset button of the mind

Letting a fresh breeze blow through all those sizzling neurons

Eating things you're not spozed to

and not caring.

And that brings me to another subject: in a memoir I read not long ago,

by never-mind-who or you'd

wonder if he really wrote it,

which he did,

the subject said he was mastering the art of "caring

while not caring"

I liked it

though could only get it

with that part of my brain or liver

that gets things

not careless, per se

but perhaps carefree

and isn't that the ideal state

in which to go on vacation?

Buried, but not quite alive

I don't know why this is, but I've always been attracted to extremes.

I get my fill of it these days, with all these so-called reality shows (all carefully stage-managed by the producers, who don't even bother to stay out of the frame any more), in which a family is torn apart by some sort of unspeakable problem (heroin addiction, crippling compulsions, etc., etc.). Surely the most bizarre of all these human sideshows is the hoarding phenomenon.

I must have really been deluded or something, but I thought hoarding just meant you were a little bit greedy. People hoarded food during World War II, didn't they, and who could blame them? The tins were all neatly stacked in the basement, or somewhere else out of sight. It wasn't nice, you weren't supposed to do it, but there was nothing too horrific about it.

Or some old lady might like to collect Hummel figurines and got carried away, so that there's not much space for her to sit down any more. That's hoarding. Isn't it?

Hamsters are called hoarders, because they like to shove copious quantities of sunflower seeds in their cheeks. Sunflower seeds seem harmless to me.

Little did I know that the hoarding of reality TV means living in what amounts to a waist-deep landfill. Pizza boxes, food wrappers, empty jars and beer cans and anything else no longer wanted is just tossed on the floor. The smell is appalling, and mice and bugs abound. It is as if these people have just given up on themselves, and on life.

As I become steadily more addicted to this awful stuff, I am beginning to notice certain themes cropping up again and again:

The family telling the psychologist/organizer that their "collecting" (not hoarding) is their own business, and not hurting them or anyone else.

Inappropriate affect: constantly smirking, chuckling or joking about the disaster while the rest of the family quietly weeps; lashing out in astonishing, malignant hate and rage at the most well-meaning attempts to help.

No functioning bathroom. No explanation given as to how these people bathe or go to the bathroom (if indeed they do).

No functioning kitchen.

A dead refrigerator full of rotting food.

No useable beds. (One particularly pathetic man huddled on the floor against a wall.)

Almost no place to sit down, and certainly no place to sit together. One partner sits on a box to eat dinner, while the other sits on the only exposed portion of the bed.

"Meals" defrosted in the microwave. Many of these people are very obese, so a lot of furtive overeating must go on behind the scenes.

No place to wash clothes. No place to store clothes, except heaped on the floor.

Okay, so among the problems these families insist they don't have are: disturbed family relations; alienation; a seemingly deliberate, literal pushing apart of loved ones by the sheer bulk of all the crap. Normal bathroom functions, normal hygiene, normal eating and sleeping, all are eroded away to nothing. The outside world is effectively shut out, and the inhabitants are shut in. They have deliberately sealed themselves inside a stinking tomb, and when approached to tidy it up a little, they say they are too overwhelmed to do it and begin to sob about their disturbed childhood.

Yes, I have no doubt that these people had enormously disturbed childhoods, but what about their disturbed adulthoods? Isn't there something they can do about this? For (as they say in recovery circles), if nothing changes, nothing changes.

A few of these profoundly disabled souls seem to have a limited life on the outside. One woman spent three hours doing her hair every morning. (It looked like one of Lady Bird Johnson's more alarming wigs.) The surface of normalcy is eggshell. Once cracked by the intrusion of "help", all sorts of twisted dysfunction bursts through.

Last night was a doozie. There are usually two stories. Though they lived in an urban setting, the first family seemed like something out of the primitive backwoods, isolated in the extreme. The father was a nasty, belligerant old man who insisted nothing was wrong and that the family had a right to live the way they wanted. The mother, her weight in excess of 300 pounds, refused to let go of even a single item, no matter how mildewed, dirty and useless. And the children! One can hardly call them children: they were 38 and 39 years old, and had never left home. The girl, for that's what she was mentally, refused to surrender a rotting old teddy bear because her Daddy had given it to her 30 years ago.

Then there was the other story, about a bizarre child-man who had concocted a story (which everyone believed without question) that he had been knighted by Prince Charles. He claimed to be an orphan from Ireland who had "come over with Father Flanagan" (! Is he trapped in an old Pat O'Brien movie, or what?) This man really was a collector of sorts, but his place was jammed with stuff so weird it looked like the inside of a schizophrenic's mind. There was no room left for anyone to live.

One can guess what really happened. His family probably couldn't cope with the stress of a toddler living in a man's body. He seemed to have the emotional equipment of a three-year-old, dressing up in costumes, playing pretend, and skipping around in his own little universe of kitsch. He had convinced himself all this stuff was worth a fortune (God knows what he had paid for it at all those garage sales!), and was only selling it off because he was dead broke.

(That's another theme. Where do these people get their money? How do they support themselves? Many of them, especially the women, are constantly buying things, like the same top in seven different colors, all left in the bags with the tags on. Or even more useless tacky items, adding to the chaos and collecting thick webs of dust that drape in the corners like macabre Halloween decorations.)

Anyway, this Sir Patrick guy was one of a kind. His Irish accent, not much better than a Lucky Charms commercial, came and went. If this was mental illness, it seemed to fit no known category.

The lowest point for me was when he found an old doll and began to cry. The therapist asked in her usual gooey compassionate way, "Does this bring something up for you?" "Me neighbor's little girl. She doyed. Ah, I loved her so." It was a new low in creepiness: maybe just as well for the little girl. (But for some reason, I was convinced that most of what he said was bullshit.)

Strange people like this used to be institutionalized, or at least hidden upstairs and forgotten. Now they are being flushed out (pardon the expression), and, to some extent, used for sensationalist entertainment. In some cases, they do seem to want help, but it seems to me they are usually being coerced, either by the family or the law. All of these places are extreme fire hazards, and many aren't even intact. If you only have half a roof on your house, sooner or later the whole place is going to cave in.

But it's not enough to need help: you have to want it, and that pathetically backward family ended up being forcibly evicted when their falling-down house was finally condemned. The last shot showed them sitting in a row staring into the camera like something out of Deliverance, with the final caption telling us they were living in an apartment with four of their seven cats and planning on repairing the house and moving back in.

Sex! Sex! And More Sex!

Fascinating topics can come from the strangest places.

I like to read in bed at night before drowsiness carries me off. I'm omniverous in my tastes, usuall ordering used books from Amazon for one cent, paying only the shipping and handling. When I saw an ad for a new book about my favorite series, Mad Men, I snapped it up, only to find that it wasn't at all what I expected.

It's about the series, yes, but it's also about a lot of other things, not all of which pertain to advertising and/or the '60s. The most startling chapter deals with Peggy (first woman copywriter at Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce, a single gal with an unconventional lifestyle and an odd but appealing personal style) and her fruitless attempt to obtain birth control pills from a judgemental doctor.

This interlude led the author, Natasha Vargas-Cooper, to take a sharp jag to the right and plunge into the subject of Victorian morality. She dredged up the life of an obscure, oddball pioneer for women's rights, one Ida Craddock. Though unmarried, she took it upon herself to write a series of pamphlets on the subject of sex: specifically, proper conduct in the marriage bed.

Eventually, the repressive society Ida was trapped in caught up with her. Facing a jail sentence for publishing obscenities, she committed suicide. But that isn't all there was to Ida.

She was one of those bizarre Spiritualist ladies, the type who conducted seances, where tables rocked and knees rubbed against each other in the dark. She claimed to have a Spirit Husband who visited her in her bed, and lectured widely on the wildly popular Theosophist teachings of Madame Blavatsky.

But mostly, Ida took it upon her maidenly self to tell everyone how to. . . y'know. . . do it.

Her little books were mighty strange, and in their own way, more repressive than the most tight-lipped schoolmarms of the era. But because they were also fairly explicit in matters that no one ever talked about, many people considered them scandalous and even pornographic.

Here are a few excerpts from The Wedding Night.

THE WEDDING NIGHT
By Ida Craddock

Oh, crowning time of lovers' raptures veiled in mystic splendor, sanctified by priestly blessing and by the benediction of all who love the lovers! How shall we chant thy praise?

Of thy joys even the poets dare not sing, save in words that suggest but do not reveal. At thy threshold, the most daring of the realistic novelists is fain to pause, and, with farewells to the lovers who are entering thy portals, let fall the curtain of silence betwixt them and the outside world forevermore.

What art thou, oh, night of mystery and passion? Why shouldst thou be thus enshrouded in an impenetrable veil of secrecy? Are thy joys so pure (ALL RIGHT, lady, shut the bleep up! Let's get to the juicy part.)

(For) there is a wrong way and there is a right way to pass the wedding night.
In the majority of cases, no genital union at all should be attempted, or even suggested, upon that night. To the average young girl, virtuously brought up, the experience of sharing her bedroom with a man is sufficient of a shock to her previous maidenly habits, without adding to her nervousness by insisting upon the close intimacies of genital contact.

And, incredible as it may sound to the average man, she is usually altogether without the sexual experience which every boy acquires in his dream-life. The average, typical girl does not have erotic dreams. In many cases, too, through the prudishness of parents--a prudishness which is positively criminal--she is not even told beforehand that genital union will be required of her.

Yet, if you are patient and loverlike and gentlemanly and considerate and do not seek to unduly precipitate matters, you will find that Nature will herself arrange the affair for you most delicately and beautifully. If you will first thoroughly satisfy the primal passion of the woman, which is affectional and maternal (for the typical woman mothers the man she loves), and if you will kiss and caress her in a gentle, delicate and reverent way, especially at the throat and bosom, you will find that, little by little (perhaps not the first night nor the second night, but eventually, as she grows accustomed to the strangeness of the intimacy), you will, by reflex action from the bosom to the genitals, successfully arouse within her a vague desire for the entwining of the lower limbs, with ever closer and closer contact, until you melt into one another's embrace at the genitals in a perfectly natural and wholesome fashion; and you will then find her genitals so well lubricated with an emission from her glands of Bartholin, and, possibly, also from her vagina, that your gradual entrance can be effected not only without pain to her, but with a rapture so exquisite to her, that she will be more ready to invite your entrance upon a future occasion.

As to the clitoris, this should be simply saluted, at most, in passing, and afterwards ignored as far as possible; for the reason that it is a rudimentary male organ, and an orgasm aroused there evokes a rudimentary male magnetism in the woman, which appears to pervert the act of intercourse, with the result of sensualizing and coarsening the woman. Within the duller tract of the vagina, after a half-hour, or, still better, an hour of tender, gentle, self-restrained coition, the feminine, womanly, maternal sensibilities of the bride will be aroused, and the magnetism exchanged then will be healthful and satisfying to both parties. A woman's orgasm is as important for her health as a man's is for his. And the bridegroom who hastens through the act without giving the bride the necessary half-hour or hour to come to her own climax, is not only acting selfishly; he is also sowing the seeds of future ill-health and permanent invalidism in his wife.

Some woman have an abnormally long clitoris, which it is impossible not to engage during coition, and such women are usually sensual, and lacking in the ability to prolong the act. In extreme cases the excision of such a clitoris may be beneficial; but it would seem preferable to first employ the milder method of suggestive therapeutics, and for the wife to endeavor to turn her thoughts from the sensation induced at the clitoris to that induced within the vagina, which is the natural and wholesome sensation to be aroused in a woman.

(And here it gets really interesting.)

Do not expend your seminal fluid at any time, unless you and the bride desire a child, and have reverently and deliberately prepared for its creation on that especial occasion. Your semen is not an excretion to be periodically gotten rid of; it is a precious secretion, to be returned to the system for its upbuilding in all that goes to emphasize your manhood. It is given to you by Nature for the purpose of begetting a child; it is not given to you for sensual gratification; and unless deliberate creation be provided for by both of you, it should never, never be expended. This however does not mean less pleasure, but more pleasure than by the ordinary method of sex union. As to the details of how such sexual self-control may be exercised during coition, and without harm to the nervous system, you can learn these from my pamphlet on RIGHT MARITAL LIVING.

Also, to the bride, I would say : Bear in mind that it is part of your wifely duty to perform pelvic movements during the embrace, riding your husband's organ gently, and, at times, passionately, with various movements, up and down, sideways, and with a semi-rotary movement, resembling the movement of the thread of a screw upon a screw. These movements will add greatly to your own passion and your own pleasure, but they should not be dwelt in thought for this purpose. They should be performed for the express purpose of conferring pleasure upon your husband, and you should carefully study the results of various movements, gently and tenderly performed, upon him.

Whew!

This is just about the strangest sexual literature I've ever seen. Though it rhapsodizes about the mystical union a bride and groom can obtain just by, well, getting it on, it also severely discourages ejaculation (while not exactly telling men how to do that), and insists that the bride's "passion" is "maternal" and "affectional", taming it into something sweet and winsome rather than a rocking, moaning, bone-shaking eruption of primal release.

Or something.

This sort of belief was fairly common then, making me honestly wonder how blue men's balls must have been in that era. "Free love" often meant the couple were not married but still engaging in some sort of close erotic contact that never ended in sexual release. Ida insists men can have an orgasm without ejaculating (oh, yes, perhaps a swami who has trained himself for decades!), and that women can have an orgasm without clitoral stimulation. Indeed, she insists the male partner should never touch his wife's genitals with his hand: this "masturbative" action will only incite unseemly appetites. The only proper "wand" to grant her satisfaction is his penis. Period.

This twists sexuality into something that must be rigidly controlled at all times, yet enjoyed as a source of unending bliss. There are so many conflicting messages in this literature that it makes my head spin. Ida Craddock really wasn't an authority on human sexuality by training or study, but by mere fascination, and (perhaps)some illicit experience. Her spirit lover may have been able to rouse her to ecstatic heights (while never touching her clitoris!): so why should she get married at all?

In another passage, she suggests that men should be allowed to ejaculate once every two years and nine months, so that children will be properly spaced apart. "Rounded off," she states, "once every three years."

I just don't get it. The hydraulics just don't work out. Back then, there was this belief that a man's joy juice somehow circulated all over the body and improved his general health. But we now know that it doesn't do that at all. Except for the presence of all those pesky wigglers, it's no more mystical than spit.

As for never touching a woman's genitals or even doing more than "salute" the clitoris (a Monty Python gesture, if there ever was one), how many orgasms would a woman be likely to have? Craddock shared the typical Victorian's horror of masturbation. She believed it would arouse a snarling, writhing, primitive lust in women, so that their genteel rotary actions would escalate into furious animal thrusting and pumping and. . . oh. You must excuse me. Sorry, Ida, I just can't follow your instructions.

******************************************************
POSTSCRIPT. Every once in a while I look back at what I've written. Bad idea, because then I see my obsessions in all their shabby glory. Lately all I seem to write about is sex (Victorian sex in particular, though that may seem like a contradiction in terms). When I'm not writing about sex, I'm moaning about the fact that my novel hasn't been published yet. It's getting monotonous.

Which one is Meryl Streep?

Which one is Meryl. . . and which one is her "bustier" sister?

Chagall dreams

I

Don't have anything much to say

today

except that life

is an endless

returning

that genius exists, that it draws and taunts me

that blue can be the quiet of the universe

don't have much to say

for if a horse can fly

and angels appear in the back yard

then,

isn't anything possible?

The summer's gone. . .

. . . and all the flow'rs are dyin'. . .

But it isn't really fall yet. It won't be for several weeks. But we're still on that same infernal system that probably goes back to feudal days, when kids were kept home in the summer to work the fields. Now they just die of boredom and work the malls.

A certain melancholy descends on me now, as I contemplate what the bleep I am going to do to publish this novel. Then I realize I have three manuscripts that need to be published, and don't know what to do with any of them!

The first one is a book of poems inspired by the diary of Anne Frank. I had several highly critical author/editor types read it, and all praised it lavishly. It bounced back to me several times, and I couldn't go on with it, it had too much of my heart in it.

Then there's Bus People. Oh, oh, oh, BUS PEOPLE! I wrote this novel in 2005, in a kind of storm of inspiration. It's set on Vancouver's notorious Downtown

Eastside.

Just as I have never heard of anyone else writing a novel about Harold Lloyd, I have never heard of anyone else setting a novel on the Downtown

Eastside.

I haven't looked at it in so long that it intimidates me. So which one do I lead with? First, I must get an agent. I'm not sure how I did that the first time, and the truth is it just didn't work out (I thought the first person who was interested in my work would be the best person to represent me to publishers.

Wrong!).

It's as if there is some impenetrable brother/sisterhood in the literary world that I just cannot penetrate. I don't know the secret handshake, or I have the wrong blood type or something. My second novel Mallory was all about social alienation and feeling like a member of another species, but I was not aware then of how excruciatingly true this is of me.

Cold shoulders and closed doors.

When it looks as if a door is about to pop open (those reviews I posted yesterday), it blows shut again, and locks tight.

So. . . I hereby post pictures of two little dolls I made for my granddaughters. They are only about 3" high, and I made them with a Wonder Knitter, a little gizmo that is essentially like the spool knitters of my childhood.

I had no instructions and no pattern, and I knitted them all in one piece, switching the two heads back and forth. The dresses were vastly scaled-down from regular doll dresses, which were scaled-down from baby dresses. I am doing everything in miniature.

This keeps me from going insane with worry and pain.

This hurts, it hurts. I know I am good. It took me this long to find out. I have three manuscripts, all of which have the potential to be published and to reach people. And at this point, it looks as if none of them will be. But I can't give up on it. I can't spend the rest of my life knitting. Something's got to give.

Novel #3: I need a (not-so-secret) agent

Reviews of BETTER THAN LIFE and MALLORY

"Joy - heart-swelling, button-bursting, exhilarating, uplifting, exuberant joy - is at the centre of Margaret Gunning's first novel, Better than Life. The details, the turns of phrase, the sharp observances that evoke both place and characters in a small town in Ontario at the end of the 1960s, are infused with a sense of lightness and humour that borders on the divine. Redemption overrides judgement every time in this carefully crafted novel, and Gunning manages to illuminate that which is dark and secret with that which is rich and riotous in colour. She is an author able to open up the world of a fractured but seeking people and bring them into light, healing and hope. Better Than Life is fiction at its finest."
- Edmonton Journal

"As Anderson-Dargatz did with her town of Likely and Stephen Leacock did with Mariposa, Gunning has created a fictional place that's recognizable to anyone who has ever lived in a small town. . . This delightful novel looks like a contender for the Leacock Medal. It may be just the book to bring some light into the room as the grey days of the rainy season settle in."
- Vancouver Sun

“Gunning does period ambience with a minimum of well-chosen references. Her expressive turns can spur shivers of pleasure. It’s a book that seduces quickly, then pulls you happily through an afternoon.”
- Globe and Mail

“It’s short and breezy, by times droll, intermittently serious and, ultimately, warm as toast. It could be in every shopping cart in the country.”
- Montreal Gazette

"There is a contagious energy to Gunning's prose which often -- and accurately -- delineates Mallory's intense emotional improvisation, child-like perspicacity and surprisingly mature realizations. Marketed as adult fiction, this is a book that could very easily attract a younger crowd, hungry for the extremes of experience and sensation Mallory represents.”
- Globe and Mail

“Margaret Gunning writes with uncanny grace and unflinching clarity about what it is to be a young girl forgotten by the world. She captures the heartbreak of loneliness and separateness, the fear and self-loathing of adolescent girlhood, with a gentle, sympathetic touch. And she manages to make Mallory complex and fully human in the process -- both victim and torturer, brilliant yet painfully naive, innocent yet seething with awakening sexual desire. The ominous feeling that underscores much of the novel is reminiscent of the best work of another Canadian author, Ann-Marie MacDonald, whose girl heroes seem to inhabit this same dark world.”
- Edmonton Journal

OK, maybe you needed to read these first. Maybe that's why my original post disappeared as I tried to cut-and-paste this. Maybe now you'll see why I am so frustrated.

There's a myth floating around in writers' circles that if you have one book that is favorably received, you're "in" and don't need to worry any more. So what happens if you have two? The comments above are just a small sampling of my reviews for Better than Life and Mallory, my first two novels. Mallory got no negative reviews at all, and BTL got only one. Both were very favorably reviewed in the books section of Canada's national newspaper, the Globe and Mail. Several of the reviews appeared in American publications which hadn't even been sent a copy. This just doesn't happen, and my first publisher called it "a miracle" (implying it had been a spontaneous act of God and not the result of my own skill and hard work).

Funny how miracles can come apart, almost as if they never happened. Sales of my first two books were abysmal, and I can't tell you why. I do know, after 25 years of being a reviewer, that some books generate "buzz" before they even go to press. Why? I will never know. It's an alchemy, a magic I don't seem to be able to capture.

I need someone to represent me. That much is plain. I need to make that leap. The novel I am ready to publish is called The Glass Character: a fictional retelling of the life and work of a long-ignored genius, silent screen comedian Harold Lloyd. I didn't just research this topic: I became Harold Lloyd, I saw the world through his glasses, I climbed high, hung on to the hands of the clock, and fell from a great height.

I am ready. But for what? For more head-banging, more trudging around, more slammed doors? I recently received the following rejection, no doubt carefully worded so as not to bruise my delicate feelings: "We may be turning down the next best-seller here, and I am sure it will find a good home soon, but I regret to tell you the answer is no."

People get there, they do. I see it. As a reviewer, I notice that a lot of very ordinary books of a certain genre do very well, and I mean every season. I'm probably breaking the writer's code of keeping your mouth shut no matter what hell you're going through. I should keep smiling while the best book I am ever likely to write goes nowhere.

Does my track record mean nothing? I wonder why no one in the industry can see that I made that "miracle" happen. It was my work, and I have a lot more. Here it is.

My e-mail address is magunning@shaw.ca. Perhaps it should appear in every post from now on.

Blurple, blurple, blurp, blurp

Herewithin and forsooth, my absolute, all-time favorite TV ad, something worthy of Mad Men's Don Draper on a good day. I've analyzed it frame-by-frame, and I'm still coming up with things I didn't see or hear in it before.

We hear almost before we see - a hesitant, then more self-assured sound, a coconutty sound of something blipping and blurping appealingly in a funny sort of tune. Then we see a trio: a suggestion of breakfast in the upper left corner (on circular plates, the first of many circular motifs), and, dominating the picture, an old-style (then standard) "coffee perc", the kind that produced a burnt, tongue-dissolving brew.

The camera loves this pot, for soon it's zooming in, tight, then tighter. The top of the perc, the blippy part, suddenly fills the screen in a closeup that can only be described as intimate. It appears to be repeatedly ejaculating into the little glass dome. By now the merry coconut theme has accelerated and is clopping away, something only a musician could compose. ("Hey, let's put some sound effects in the background. You know, the sound of the coffee perking.")

Meantime, we have a shot of the pot exuding, nay, gushing steam, in a sensory blast that dares us to inhale. The next shot is so brilliant I swoon when I see it: the wide, round, white cup poured full of black coffee sits in the very back of the frame, surrounded by nothing. Nothing! Just the cup. Then a giant male hand comes out from the right-hand side, picks up the cup and lifts it up and forward so that the black coffee fills the entire screen.

Jesus!

Some giant is drinking this coffee! Then comes another arresting shot: the cup and the coffee can standing next to each other, two circles, with the dominant image on the right. It's said that Mickey Mouse is so appealling because he's made up of circles, maybe because they're non-threatening and remind us of ova and baby's heads.

One more split-second shot of the coffee being poured, a sort of review. (This is like some sort of mini-drama in one minute: it's crammed with images, but somehow seems leisurely.) Then in the next shot (every one is significant in this ad), someone is holding up the round can to face the camera. The rich-looking ground coffee is literally shoved in our faces, and on the left-hand side there is a small avalanche of coffee that might just have happened by accident, and was kept in for sensory value.

I haven't even mentioned the voice-over, which is equally brilliant: see, smell, taste the coffee flavor! As with most early ads, there is a lot of repetition, but in this case it's more hypnotic than annoying. The name Maxwell House is mentioned five times in one minute. "Taste", as in "tastes as good as it smells" or "taste the coffee flavor", is mentioned six times. This ad appeals to every sense (listen, look, smell, taste) except touch, but that's why that big hand comes into the frame, almost erotic.

When you first watch the ad, none of this registers. You have no awareness at all of the fact that you're hearing the brand five times, or that "tastes as good as it smells" (the slogan) is being drilled into your subconscious. Some guy in a rumpled suit with a hangover came into the office, plunked himself down and said, "Well, guys, I've got it."

"How's that gonna work? It's too simple."

"But that's just the point. We want nothing but straight, clean, simple images, with circles, tight closeups and a lot of repetition. We want those idiots at home to listen, look, smell, taste the coffee flavor, whether they want to or not! We want them to hear "tastes as good as it smells" so often, they go numb."

"But what's going to happen at the grocery store?"

"Nothing. But faced with a few varieties of coffee, their hands will gravitate. They won't know why. In their subconscious, they're going to hear that blurple, blurple, blurp, blurp. . ."

"Hey, I've got a better idea. "You get a cup and a half of flavor. . . "

How to kill the bunny in one easy lifetime

The! Writing! Life!: Myths and Tips your Mother Won’t Yell you

MYTH #1: Once you’re published, you’re “in” and will never experience rejection again.

MYTH #2: You will keep the same publisher for the rest of your life.

MYTH WHATEVER: All agents know what they’re doing and who to approach and how to best represent you to the publisher.

YEAH, AND (while we’re at it), you can protest honestly about how badly you have been treated without serious or fatal repercussions.

Writer’s groups help sharpen your skills and boost morale. But they don’t, and I’ll tell you why:

Most people in them don’t know how to critique, so they just put down an opinion which may be very uninformed and of no use to you at all. And the following:

(i) Most of the critiquing isn’t critiquing at all, but consists of “oh, that’s awesome/lovely”, or words to that effect.

(ii) Everyone will strive to find the atom of good in your piece and play it up so as not to hurt your feelings.

(iii) NO ONE takes criticism well. If they are pretending to, they’re phonies. In fact, no one really wants criticism at all. They want to hear, “oh, that’s awesome/lovely”.

Writer’s groups are a great source of mutual support, no? Guess what. Sharing secrets of what makes writing work for you is deadly. If you were a tennis pro, would you sit down with your competition and say, “Now, here’s how I do my killer backhand”?

Publishing, like most things, is a pyramid, with 98 or 99% of writers at the bottom or in the middle somewhere. Only a couple of percent make it to “the top” and make any real money or get movie deals, like everyone expects to. If you “support” other writers, you are in effect saying to them, “Here, let me give you a leg-up on the ladder and take my spot. I don’t want it.”

Some writers are absolutely ruthless (see “only a couple of percent”: that’s how they got there) and, if you’re any good at all, will do anything to obliterate you and your work. Watch your back.

Some writers, usually those in writer’s groups, will sabotage you in all sorts of subtle ways. They wear away at you like a worm until you are completely undermined. It’s not that they want to succeed; they just want to see you fail.

Rejections never stop hurting, you never get used to them, and they always come on the same day the plumbing fails, the dog dies and you have your period.

(Here’s another reason why not to exchange work with other writers.) Be careful no one steals your stuff. It happens, and it’s devastating. It isn’t usually the whole manuscript, just the spiritual core of it, ripped out and shamelessly exploited. If it’s published before yours is (which it probably will be, given the 2-year lag that no one knows about), you will be branded a plagiarist, or at least unoriginal. If you protest or even say anything about it at all, you’ll be considered defensive, insecure and unprofessional. Practice the indispensible skill of enduring abuse silently and with a smile.

Coming up to a published author (especially a famous one) with manuscript trembling in hand is a bad idea. They don’t have time to read your stumbling efforts because they are busy writing their own work. If they did read it, they would likely tell you what they really think. They won’t read it, say “God, this is the best thing I’ve ever seen!”, hand it to their publisher and say, “Here’s the next best-seller. Publish it.”

If the famous author turns down your work, don’t go around telling everyone he/she is a jerk. It’s ungracious and unfair and not true. Well, probably not.

How-to-write books can’t teach you how to write, because writing can’t be taught (though it can be learned). Amassing shelves of them does not mean you are serious and dedicated, it just means you never get to your desk. Why not just pick one and do what it says?

Don’t talk about it endlessly. Most people who say they want to be writers don’t write. It’s easier than facing the blank page/one’s limited talent/terror of being rejected and found out.

Oh, and! I hate to be a pain and go on and on like this, but there are such riches of anguish to impart. If you go to writer’s workshops and conventions, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t, you will hear maddeningly contradictory advice from different instructors. The truth is, there is no right way to do this, and writers detest being told what to do anyway. Real writers don’t even go to these things, for that reason (unless they’re hired as instructors: try to land this gig, it’s great for exposure/covert book-signings and strategic schmoozing/ass-kissing!).

Doing free gigs is supposed to help you get launched. In truth, it's a one-way ticket to Palookaville. Charge money as soon as it is humanly possible, as much as you can get.

I hate to say that the best part is the writing itself, but it is. It’s maybe 90%. It had better be, because your chances of being a real success are slim to none. There – are we feeling better now?

The Beatles - Rock & Roll Music

These blogs have a life of their own. This was going to be a serious treatise on "the writer's life" (or should I say, The! Writer's! Life!), but somehow it didn't happen. It's evolving into some sort of nostalgia column, which is a bit alarming on my part.

But oh, these guys.

I stumbled on A Hard Day's Night the other evening, and was quickly sucked in. It had that heady, exuberant feeling the Beatles exuded during the early years, before they lapsed into their jaded I'm a Loser/Baby's in Black/You've Got to Hide your Love Away period. This clip is one of the best compilations I've seen, complete with fluffy head-shaking (which drove the girls mad) and a kind of mad joy. They'd made it past the skiffle clubs of Merseyside and had gone on to (as John put it) "the toppermost of the poppermost!"

Pay attention to 1:18 in this clip: Paul absolutely cracks up at something John has played on the keyboard. These guys were brothers, and sometimes experienced the rancor and Cain-and-Abel rage of blood kin. Yet, separately, neither could write or perform in that same focused, fruitful way. The shock is that they almost never composed together: they wrote songs "at" each other, put them out there and said, "What do you think?", or even "Try and stop me." This jealousy and tension pulled genius out of them that never would have manifested any other way.

OK then, I've come as far as Mad Men and the Beatles. Do you know what I'm avoiding? I do. I am avoiding the welter of pain and residual anguish of being published for the first couple of times. It was a heady experience, to be sure, but at a certain point I fell through the ice. How on earth am I to comment on "the writer's life" without mentioning this? But if I make too much of it, I will be worse box office poison than I already am. Writers must never let on that their experiences have been anything but totally positive. Only ingrates complain.

The truth is, I have a manuscript that I believe is my very finest work, and I have no idea what to do with it, who to contact. I can't do this alone! I am turned away everywhere, before the thing has even been considered. Sorry, we're full up.

I feel as if I am recreating the cold shoulder I have experienced all my life, from every direction and in every area. Is there a way out? I have to pretend I don't need this, pretend it doesn't hurt and I am fine and I don't mind only writing about the past and writing about the Beatles.

This thing is going to die on the vine. In the words of the Beatles: "Help! I need somebody." After becoming a published author, after having my dream come true twice, it's an awful position to be in.

Mail order orgasm

This, from Wikipedia, absolutely made my day. I had never heard of vibrators for sexual purposes until the mid-'70s, and assumed they were a recent innovation. Why was this fascinating bit of medical history censored?

Take it away, boys.

"The history of hysteria can be traced to ancient times; in ancient Greece it was described in the gynecological treatises of the Hippocratic corpus, which date from the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Plato's dialogue Timaeus tells of the uterus wandering throughout a woman’s body, strangling the victim as it reaches the chest and causing disease. This theory is the source of the name, which stems from the Greek word for uterus, hystera.

"Galen, a prominent physician from the second century, wrote that hysteria was a disease caused by sexual deprivation in particularly passionate women: hysteria was noted quite often in virgins, nuns, widows and, occasionally, married women. The prescription in medieval and renaissance medicine was intercourse if married, marriage if single, or vaginal massage (pelvic massage) by a midwife as a last recourse.

"Rachel P. Maines has observed that such cases were quite profitable for physicians, since the patients were at no risk of death, but needed constant treatment. The only problem was that physicians did not enjoy the tedious task of vaginal massage (generally referred to as 'pelvic massage'): The technique was difficult for a physician to master and could take hours to achieve "hysterical paroxysm." Referral to midwives, which had been common practice, meant a loss of business for the physician.

"A solution was the invention of massage devices, which shortened treatment from hours to minutes, removing the need for midwives and increasing a physician’s treatment capacity. Already at the turn of the century, hydrotherapy devices were available at Bath, and by the mid-19th century, they were popular at many high-profile bathing resorts across Europe and in America.

"By 1870, a clockwork-driven vibrator was available for physicians. In 1873, the first electromechanical vibrator was used at an asylum in France for the treatment of hysteria.

"While physicians of the period acknowledged that the disorder stemmed from sexual dissatisfaction, they seemed unaware of or unwilling to admit the sexual purposes of the devices used to treat it. In fact, the introduction of the speculum was far more controversial than that of the vibrator.

"By the turn of the century, the spread of home electricity brought the vibrator to the consumer market. The appeal of cheaper treatment in the privacy of one’s own home understandably made the vibrator a popular early home appliance. In fact, the electric home vibrator was on the market before many other home appliance ’essentials’: nine years before the electric vacuum cleaner and 10 years before the electric iron.

"A page from a Sears catalog of home electrical appliances from 1918 includes a portable vibrator with attachments, billed as ”Very useful and satisfactory for home service.” Other cures for female hysteria included bed rest, bland food, seclusion, refraining from mentally taxing tasks (for example, reading) and sensory deprivation."

Too bad they couldn't just lie there on their fainting couch and watch reality TV while stuffing their fat faces with Cheetohs. They could have satisfied all their appetites at once, and squeezed the extra pounds away with one of dem-dar corsets they wore.

I wonder if attitudes toward female sexuality have improved that much: women are either pole dancers in thongs and net stockings, or dutiful but frumpy Moms trundling the kids off to soccer games. Oversexy, or not sexy at all. And what is "sexy" anyway? It all looks pretty stereotyped to me.

On a previous post, I wrote about princesses. So what's the deal there? In all the fairy tales, they were universally virginal and untouched until that amazing First Kiss. First sex is always awkward, in fact it can be downright painful, but somehow, in its fumblingly determined way, the human race has managed it (and managed and managed and managed it).

Has the deck been stacked against female plesure from the very beginning? I'm a slavish fan of Mad Men, the best series I have ever watched. The sharks of l960s Madison Avenue circle one another every week, waiting to lunge for the kill.

But there are domestic dramas unfolding behind the piranha-tank of the office.

Don Draper is the alpha male of the series and the biggest prick the ad world has ever seen. But he does have a redeeming fondness for his 10-year-old daughter Sally, traumatized by her parents' recent divorce and her mother's remarriage to a wealthy man she doesn't

love.

In this past episode, Sally hacks her hair off, causing her mother to slap her hard across the face. In my experience, cutting off one's own hair is pretty close to slashing or burning: it's self-mutilation, and to be slapped for that by your mother is pretty harsh stuff. But then Sally really gets into trouble.

While at a sleepover at a friend's house, Sally watches TV raptly while Ilya Kuryakin of The Man from UNCLE, tied up back-to-back with someone, murmurs in his usual seductive way. We see Sally slowly begin to hike up her flannel nightgown.

And then -

Then her friend's mother bursts in, shrieks at Sally, strongarms her out of there away from her daughter (who slept through the whole thing), and drags her home, telling her mother she was masturbating in public.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the adults' reactions to this news. It was blank disbelief mixed with a kind of repulsion A sort of "whaaaaaat?" thing. Betty Draper even tells her ex-husband, "Girls who do that are, you know. Fast." Sally is promptly packed off to a child psychiatrist to be straightened out.

Oh, you can say this was a long time ago, but I really don't think the reaction now would be that much different. The impression was that, perhaps being a bit young for full-blown sexual feelings, Sally was experimenting a little, curious about her own body and what it was capable of.

This is supposed to be "normal" and "healthy", but do we really see it that way? If you went to a psychologist and said, "My daughter masturbates in public," what do you think they'd say?

I once tried to post something on the Oprah web site that contained the word "masturbation". It appeared for a second, then was deleted. I tried once more, and it was deleted again. Too dirty and offensive to mention,

I guess.

Time to break out the mail order vibrators again?

A bucket of hormones

I found out last night that it all comes down to hormones. Or chemicals, or whatever it is that lights up the brain.

According to this show, Secrets of the Mind or something like that, "love" just comes down to changes in the brain: violent changes, flooding the cortex and other structures with feel-good chemicals, along with the bizarre notion that it will always always always be this way, that we'll always feel this euphoric and live the rest of our lives on a fleecy pink cloud.

To me, it's a biohazard.

I'm not against love, not against romance, no nor any of it, or I wouldn't be posting pictures from A Room with a View, in which George clasps Lucy around her virginal, corseted waist and kisses the hell out of her. Oh God! These are my fantasies, and I freely admit it. I'm just a transplanted Victorian, and wish I had the same masses of untameable dark hair and smoldering eyes, and got to wear those great outfits.

The show about the secrets of the mind had an English couple (let's call them George and Martha) who were recently married and decided to "test" the durability of their love by getting brain scans, going on an arduous months-long cycling trip that would include all sorts of awful hardships, then having their brains tested again.

If their brains still lit up with ecstatic electrochemical activity even after the road trip from hell, then it would prove that they were Really In Love. If not, well. . .

Guess what, folks: the woman's brain somehow still held on to the hormonal brush fire, but his didn't. Oh man, that brain scan was pathetic. It had somehow all turned grey. All the fiery reds and yellows had fizzled out.

His wife was absolutely devastated. Imagine, not being able to sustain the role of Prince Charming for the rest of your life! Imagine not constantly experiencing honeymoon bliss for forty or fifty years. It was unthinkable.

Here I want to pause on this story - it's boring the piss out of me anyway, as it's so distorted and patently false - and talk a bit about weddings. I remember a time in the early '70s when all sorts of proclamations were issued about the Changing Role of Women. No longer were we delicate little princesses tripping around in high heels. If we did undertake a "romance", it would be a partnership of equals, quite possibly between two women. Marriage was out, or consisted of a quick civil ceremony: get the nasty business over with as quickly and cheaply as possible.

At that point, all domestic chores were split exactly down the middle. When it came right down to it, each partner would wash half a dish.

Fast forward a few decades, and it has all lapsed back to the '50s, or even before that. Huge puffy white gowns, a million bridesmaids, a $500 cake made by that Buddy guy on that show, a few hundred guests, catered reception, etc. etc. etc.: these are standard now, and women (and, alarmingly, little girls) are all being conditioned to return to fainting passivity.

Fuck equality! Bring on the princesses.

I see it every day: I have three grandgirls, and everything they play with is princess-themed. The princess movies make a feeble attempt to mention traits like self-confidence and self-esteem, but for the most part all they do is sit around waiting to be rescued.

I can't help but think this stampede back to traditional customs (and spending) is some sort of reaction against feminism and its disturbing implications that not all is equal in gender-land. Who wants to hear about that, when the girls can get together to giggle, drink Sangria and watch beefy, oiled-up gay men gyrate and strip?

I often feel - and maybe this is my age - that I'm outside of things, but I'm outside of things deliberately because the "things" alarm me so much. I refuse to use the word "iconic" to describe items like cupcakes. I won't say "agaaaaahhn" for "again", or "fesssshhhh" for "fish". For some reason, my jaw won't drop to my chest like that.

I don't tweet. Hey, listen, I really don't object to the act of tweeting itself. But why the hell call it something so lame, so brainless? If someone had told people twenty years ago that there would be a popular means of communication called tweeting, they would have laughed at you in disbelief or looked at you with an incredulous, even offended expression.

I have a bird that twitters, I have a bird that sings, but that's about all.

I'm not against technology, but why does a recent innovation have to be called Skype? Can you think of an uglier word? Worse than Vonage, worse than Voip, worse than anything.

I care about words, I care about how people use and pronounce them. They are my stock in trade. Now, how did I get onto this? Anyway, four months later, George and Martha got their brains tested again. Everyone held their breath. If George's brain was still grey, well, that would be the end of the marriage.

But he went back inside that frightening sausage-roll thing, in spite of his claustrophobia. This is the sort of story producers of reality shows manipulate all the time. They manufacture happy endings, even for dismal cases of hoarding in which the person lives in a sickening, gagging landfill. They call it a happy ending if the person (or the producer) has cleared a 6-inch wide path. They. . . never mind, they did it again, and George's brain was nice and sparkly and red, all lit up like a Christmas tree. (Obviously, they had kept the first scan on file.)

"Oh, darling!" his wife exclaimed. It was like something out of a Monty Python sketch with Michael Palin and Carol Cleveland.

I'm not sure what my central point is here, but I do wish couples would put half the energy into marriage that they do into the wedding.

Partners fart and burp and go to the bathroom. They get testy and even furious, and critical. Their needs don't match. Their interests don't match. Their sexual urges don't match. They get sick of each other sexually and want variety. They have huge rows about finance, and mortgages, and whose house they'll go to for Christmas dinner. They'll think to themselves: I can't believe what I've gotten myself into!

If they come home late, even a little bit late, they will have to explain why. They'll put something important down, a notebook or laptop or a pair of shoes, and when they look again, it'll be gone. Their partner will have "put it away". The chicken salad they were saving so they wouldn't have to slave over dinner on a hot day will be eaten: the dirty plate won't even be in the dishwasher! It will be sitting there on the counter surrounded by globs of salad and greasy crumbs.

Laundry, well, don't look too close, especially at underwear. Princesses aren't supposed to have secretions, or those little menstrual accidents that happen to absolutely every woman. And men aren't supposed to have. . .well, I do have limits as to how explicit I am willing to be.

This is life, not too savoury or smooth. Often it's just boring, or at least very tame. Vacations cost too much, so you stay at home and snap at each other. You gain weight, inexplicably, then gain some more. Mother-in-laws nag. Father-in-laws drain all your best booze. One day, hubby stumbles upon a web site, simply fascinating. Well, there' s nothing wrong with appreciating feminine pulchritude, is there?

Meanwhile, she is getting into conversations at work with a guy that makes her just scream with laughter. It's incredible: they have exactly the same sense of humor. (George hasn't made her laugh in six years.) One day, he looks at her intently and tells her she has the most beautiful eyes he has ever seen.

That's the story of, that's the glory of love.

I've been married 37 years, to the same guy. People are incredulous when they hear that. For one thing, they assume I'm 100 years old, when in truth I'm only 97. They want to know The Secret. They want to know the formula. Is there one?

Yes.

There are a couple of things I've found that are absolutely indispensible. My husband and I couldn't be more different in temperament and interests and personal assets.

But there are two crucial things we have in common: first of all, our values are practically identical. (What are values, you say? It's not something you attain for $10.99 at Walmart. It's the principles you live by, and the things you hold most dear.)

Recently we went to one of those pioneer places where a town had been replicated, complete with authentic artifacts. This was from 1920, however, and over and over again, Bill and I kept saying, "Hey, look at that wicker chair (or cheese grater or meat grinder or bread box). My grandmother had one of those."

Sometimes it was even "my mother". Soon it was clear we were blood kin, or maybe even twins. At very least, we had the same grandmother. This went beyond mere artifacts and straight into the heart of how we live. Our grandmothers (and our mothers) lived in such an identical manner BECAUSE THEY CARED ABOUT THE SAME THINGS and imparted those same values to their children.

The other thing is: shall I quote Aretha here? R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Respect will hold like powerful glue long after the flimsy post-it paste of romance lets go. Even when I wanted to throttle him, I never stopped respecting him. Why? Because, somehow or other, when I was 18 years old (yes, 18 years old), I made a good choice. Can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

I'm sick of this now, so I'll stop, but I hope I've gotten some things across. If you want the pumping, swollen, slippery, ecstatically moaning highs of "romance" (which I think is just a code-word for lust), use your hand, or your finger. And try to stay off those porn sites.