There and Back Again

It's been so long since I posted it took me three times to remember my sign-in and get it right. I didn't realize I'd been gone that long.

Drifting. Disbelief in myself as a writer. Exhaustion. Depression. The usual culprits. But hello, Kathleen, you've got an audience here! Well, maybe. It's a nice fantasy.

I have taken heart, though, from Thomas Disch. I knew his name but not his work (have not yet read his children's book, The Brave Little Toaster, though his adult SF titles sound good, too.) I checked out his blog, once I learned of his death by suicide a week ago. I found a writer even older than myself, also engaged, among other things, with a gruff effort to both understand and participate in the world. I am sorry he lost his fight, but I sympathize. Life is hard and gets harder.

It made me think though that maybe it is okay to be an old(ish) writer, gruff and full of barnacles and wood rot and embarrassing, unexplainable fears of travel, with a terrible croaky voice and way less hair than I used to have. Age happens. But the heart of a writer happens, too, and does not seem to stop with the disintegration of flesh (disintegration of the mind is possibly another matter. I saw my mother's attempts at painting as her Alzheimer's moved in, and it quickly deteriorated. But what was in her heart? Sadly, I lost that, too.)

I still want to be a writer, though, so I guess I will just have to be an old writer. Not much choice, is there?

RIP, Thomas Disch. And to me, you go, girl!