Uppity Downity

I'm flapping and flopping around in a big puddle of anxiety. I hate it when that happens, as it's terribly uncomfortable. I'm just anxious about (flap flap flop) pretty much everything at the moment, but I will try to focus on one specific.

Nothing new, of course, just my currently dim author aura. (Low wattage, that one.) I am not commercial enough, either in my work or in my aspect, to attract attention. So, dim dim dim it goes.

But I don't want to dwell on it or get the self-sorries. Mostly I just want to comment on one of the things about being an artist that is true: you go up and you go down. I think (here I'm feeling superior to those who are successful) that if you are lucky you experience the downward turn at a lower level of popularity. Because if you are very popular and then you go down, well, that's crushing. But if you are not so high up and go down . . . okay, it's crushing, but at least you haven't yet begun to feel you're too big to fail. (Sorry. Couldn't help it.)

Of course, if you go up in popularity and stay there and never come down, well, this post ain't for you, so scram!

Anyway, I am grateful that I can see the arc of my work, and that after the depression of failure and loss comes acceptance. And--I am hopeful I will rise again! Which saying, in and of itself, makes me sound important. So there.

Peas Porridge Hot

I am passing time before I commence making a (very simple) food dish to bring to an Easter dinner gathering. Concerning cooking and cleaning, I have pretty much given up on my ever being anything but a household clod, and have come to feel more acceptance of my actual domestic nature.

On the writing front, I am making slow progress on my current work-in-progress. Approaching the end, but I won't get there for a while. I wish I were a speed-writer, but I'm not. In fact, the only thing I approach with any speed at all is a piece of chocolate. So today, Easter, is pretty much my day. :-)

Still, with some authors whipping out books right and left, as if they're on a speed-date with fame, it can be disconcerting. I, myself, actually went through a relatively fast whipping-out-of-books period a few years back, but have since resorted to my usual lumbering pace. I knew it was out there waiting for me.

Coming to terms with one's imperfections is the work of the mature. By which I mean old. By which I mean probably older than you, but maybe not. When you are young you intrinsically understand that the perfections are coming. They will be here next week or next year, just hold on!

Part of me is still holding . . .

But by the time you figure out that the word "mature" applies to you--yes, you--well, you have two choices: Despair over your generally rotted state, or accept the imperfections, much as you would accept a raggedy garden. Needs weeding and watering and fertilizing, but by damn a few pink and yellow flowers are still blooming!

So maybe this is my Easter sermon. I didn't plan to have one. I don't go to church precisely because of the word "sermon," though of course that is unkind to good sermonizers everywhere.

At any rate, I wish a Happy Easter to all who are Eastering, and a happy just-plain-good-day to those who are not.

I, myself, will sit quietly for a while and try to muster my cooking gene. It's in there somewhere, waiting to flex its tiny muscle.

I'm Back! said Nora, with a monumental crash . . .

That might not be the exact line, but the image from NOISY NORA by Rosemary Wells (I'm thinking of the original illustrations) where Nora, the little mouse jealous of her big sister and new baby brother, hiding from her parents to make them worry and come looking for her, triumphantly bursts out of her hiding place, flinging open the closet door . . . is priceless, as they say.

So, I'm back. Or backish, as I still feel a little uncertain. I became fearful that my blog was beyond hopeless. Not hot enough or commercial enough. I know what I'm up against, in the author blogosphere, and, face it, I ain't there.

Nonetheless, having been given two recent nudges, I've traipsed my way back. Maybe I just got lonely for the sound of my own words. Personal blogs are very much a me me me situation. Well, all I've got to share is me, so there you have it.

As for writerly news: well, um, a manuscript is being shopped and another one is under construction, but that's about it. Scary times in publishing, as in everywhere else, but I feel strangely okay. Not sure why, but what else is there to do but get through it, come out the other side? In a time of buildings collapsing, meteorites hitting, dinosaurs prowling . . . I exaggerate, but it does feel that way . . . in these weird times I have decided to perk up and claim my authorhood. Weird seems to suit me.

"I'm back!" said Fusty, with a monumental splat. We'll see . . .

Years Past, Year Present

I remember how insulted I felt when I first encountered the phrase "content provider" being used in place of "author." Changes were surely coming, cattle-prodded along matter-of-factly by trumpeters of all things digital, but I deeply resented the denigration of my creative work.

Of course there are many ways to be creative, digital and not. I didn't believe, even then, that all truly creative people belonged over here, on my side, while the heartless digital pushers belonged on that side. No, I wasn't so closed-minded as that. I was just sorry to see the further crumbling of respect for those who produce art. Art being, in this case, the (often) labored result of the creative impulse. The story/book/song/canvas/sculpture that resulted from that endeavor, held up for the world to see.

It has been a great sorrow to see the held object vanish into history.

I knew art would blossom online, eventually. But I felt the loss of what had been should be acknowledged. Many people mourned as I did, while digital-lovers mostly laughed. But that's what happens when an era passes.

Now I am more adjusted to the changing world, though it is still changing so ferociously fast that there is no end in sight--assuming anyone ever dreamed of an end. I am not very technically adept, so that puts me at a serious disadvantage in this new world. Still, I am very curious about how the written word will transform.

Books of some sort will still be written, of course, because we cannot seem to stop telling the story of ourselves. Barring horrible accident or disease, I have just enough time left to see young people in their new and ever-coming-newer digital lives. I have just enough time, I hope, to see art not only continue but blossom in it's new garden.

Probably, it already is.

Dis Heart End

This afternoon it is raining, raining, raining. As evening has come the sky has moved rapidly from gray to black. And it's cold out.

In some ways, these are the kinds of days I like best, though I don't like to be out in them--catching a bus, say, or walking home with a bag of groceries. No, I like to be safe inside, the inclement weather making my hibernation a good, logical choice, a great idea.

Fall has always been my favorite season. The short days, night coming early. It's not for everyone, I know, but it is for me, maybe because the shortened day feels stronger somehow. Muscular and tightly held, but powerful.

That is the way a good poem should be, in my opinion. Though of course there are many wonderful poems the exact opposite, loose and flowing warmly across the page. I have been thinking about poetry lately, saddened because I rarely write it anymore. Though it is there inside of me.

I didn't realize my later years would entail such a struggle between time spent in necessary but disheartening tasks, and time spent staring at a computer screen. The disheartening tasks have come as a surprise to me. Not because they are new, but because I am newly impatient. I used to say nothing, in order to give my writing my full attention. Now, though, I find I say everything--or want to--and am just about unable to bear the incompetence which plagues certain aspects of my life.

So, writing a poem sounds good. Forget that which discourages me, turn inward, then fling the found words outward.

Except I'm so damn tired. That, apart from everything else, dis heart ends.

Stoopid Bloody Thanksgiving Post

Last night, Thanksgiving Eve, I was in a funk--otherwise known as depressed and feeling sorry for myself--so I decided to do what some people have often suggested: Make a gratitude list.

I gotta say, just thinking about doing it made me feel even more depressed and sorry for myself. Stoopid bloody cheerful people . . .

However, this morning a Big Gratitude came to me: I am grateful that there are people in my life who tolerate me, even going so far as to wish me a Happy Thanksgiving and invite me over for some grub. So, that's big. Thanks, all you guys out there! You know who you are, unless I forgot to mention it . . .

Concerning my writing, it's been difficult, of late, to feel either good about it or grateful for what I have accomplished, what with Everything In The Known Universe tanking. Basically, life has become a giant Going Out of Business Sale, with no buyers.

However, when I really, really, really think about it, I am glad that I managed, if imperfectly, to produce a few books that someone thought worthy of publication, and I am grateful that a few people have actually read and enjoyed them.

I am also happy to realize--however improbable the odds are of actually pulling it off--that I need to re-create myself as a writer. Both to shake up the creative juices and to greet the new publishing world that is emerging. A monumental task, I know.

But I spend way too much time on the surface of things, worried and anxious and doing exactly nothing. Sometimes there is no help for that, but other times I'm just too lazy or too distracted to pull on my spelunking boots and snap on my head lamp, too tired to grab my shovel and start the descent.

That is the hard work of being an artist--getting to the core of things to find just what it is you need to understand, just what it is you need to express in your work. It's not an easy trip, and it's one that often has little material reward. I believe it is essential, though, to satisfy the soul. Mine, at least.

So my goal is to continue, despite all odds, to dig down and write write write. If that is a paltry Thanksgiving message, so be it. It's what I've got.

Today, Though

I need to take my own advice. In the last entry I wrote about the journey between center and surface, and how maybe the voyage to and from is what feeds the artist's soul. At the time, I was enjoying a visit to the center, and feeling renewed.

Of course, it immediately followed that I have spent every day since not only on the surface but blasted against it. Core? What's that? I'm all hard edges and distance and misery.

This current dislocation is caused by the things in life that gnaw at you, which you have no control over. We all have these things, of course. Mine just seem, of late, to be twenty feet tall and really, really mean. Of course I cringe. It's expected.

It follows that when I am in a place like this, I cannot write.

So I read a couple of cherry, professional writing blogs today. It helped, a little. Nothing like a little cheery professionalism to perk one up, and I've been in need of perking. I am often not cheery or terribly professional, so sometimes I need a lesson.

Today, though, I am a bad student. I am still stuck to the surface, miserably. I end up here again and again and again. Why why why why why why why?

Tomorrow's lesson: Figure this out.

P.S. It's tomorrow. Yesterday my Internet connection went out, and I was unable to post the above blog. I have still not figured anything out . . . I am doomed!