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As it turned out, she did.
And I was floored. Beyond floored. Awed, astonished, amazed, grateful - quite literally to the point of speechlessness. Intimidated even.
Why? I asked. Naturally I was waiting for her to tell me some variation on, Because you are so wonderful. Because I believe in you. But all she said was, Money is only important to those who don't have it. Is that really true? In the end I suppose she was acting as a trustee for the Universe. The Universe, for some mysterious reason, is determined to be kind to me. I don't have a clue why that is; I've long since given up on the idea that there's anything particularly special about me beyond an obstinate compulsion to write it all down. Is testifying a type of courage or sheer pigheadedness? Dunno.
We've been on a Spike Lee bender. Spike Lee hates us 'cause he thinks we're white. Actually, Italians were being lynched all over the South right up through the 1920s and Hitler himself wasn't all that sure Wops deserved to sit next to members the Master Race during those long Valhalla assembly periods.
Even at his most self indulgent, Spike Lee is an interesting filmmaker. He's got a distinctive visual/audio stamp and except for Jungle Fever where the message is unequivocally, Stay away from our proud African men, Honky Beyatch, his social messages are curiously ambiguous.
We watched Clockers last night.
On the drive to I-town, RTT announces - only half facetiously - “I wanna be a clocker!”
“You do? Well, then I think you missed the point of the movie.”
“No, I didn't! Harvey Keitel fucked Strike over! Otherwise he would have been fine.”
“I don't see it that way. Harvey Keitel got Strike out of town. Strike literally didn't have the stomach for that job.”
Not sure how the Clockers analysis metamorphosed into a discussion of RTT's own personality and manipulative tendencies. Robin pushes emotional keys like Paganini played The Emperor Concerto, and not just with me - he does it with everyone. I thought Max set the high mark for girl bait in high school, but Robin's got his older brother beat on all accounts. Girls throw themselves at him. His latest conquest is the pretty daughter of one of Ithaca's richest families. As far as I can tell, he hasn't taken her out on a single date. She drives over a few times a week, they hole up in the Robintorium and have sex. At least they use condoms - I know because I get to clean up his room.
(Do I care that 17 year old Robin has sex with girls in my house? Not really. You can't fight every battle. The one I muster the big armies for is the Drug War.)
When I dropped him off at school, I told him, “You know, Robin, you're very, very charming. The proverbial he-can-charm-birds-out-of-trees kind of guy. But that will only take you up to age 35 or so. You've got to develop some other skills. If you never remember anything else I've ever told you, remember this: You spend more time being old than you do being young in this life.”
“Bye, Mom,” Robin said, climbing out of the car. “Love you.”
He'd forgotten what I'd said to him already if indeed he actually heard it.
###
B has taken the lead on the college application process. That's fine. B is generally an excellent father (except for the times when he disappears for a couple of weeks and RTT wonders whether he's a) In jail or b) has killed himself. And that hasn't happened since Jayne LeGros became the warden.)
RTT is clearly the most important thing in Ben's life. I can't say RTT is the most important in mine. I love the kid dearly and often wish some bus would try to run him over so I could throw myself between him and oncoming danger. But that big blow-out fight we had last summer took something out of me. I no longer think I can save RTT when the Universe prepares to kick him in the balls. And the Universe is gonna kick him in the balls. It's inevitable.
In other news, I got my hair cut á la Twiggy. I like the cut. Nobody else does.
Rutger, Dave's erstwhile cat, has become a fully integrated member of the household with his own personal mythology, (Born in Aix-en-Provence in 1814, Sir Rutger L'Orange's Platonic epistolary friendship with Lady Bianca Rogue - whom he always referred to as The Meezer - has become one of the literary touchstones of the French surrealist movement…) Dave is still dying of brain cancer and doesn't remember Rutger at all. I'm glad we rescued him -- he has an endearingly eccentric personality. He's still scared of the Great Outdoors however.
Hoping to finish first draft of ADA book by Friday.
My own writing is going really, really badly. I'm ten chapters into the novel now and still haven't tweaked the Stegner stories into a format I like. They've gotta be in this next week.
Not feeling the novel at all, just following the very elaborate plot treatment I drafted six months ago and hoping that sheer craft will propel it.
Connie Willis once told me, “Sure, you're talented. Who isn't? But if you don't learn the tricks, you're never going to amount to anything as a writer. Your life is too busy. You don't have the time.”
I think I may have literally have backed out of that conversation, making the sign of the cross.
Five years later, I began to realize, Know what? She was right.
I still don't know the tricks. Consequently, I write like a medium, channeling alternate realities 'cause I don't know simpler methods of evoking them.
Tension is the hardest thing to write.
You're writing the climactic scene where Our Hero gets the shit kicked out of him in a bar. You've got to stop yourself from writing biographies of the neo-Nazis hanging out in the bar. That charming and witty History of Bourbon? Fugettaboutit. Your sentences need to get shorter and shorter.
Then there's description. I don't even know why I bother to write description: It's the kind of thing an impatient reader skims, right? Was reading Ruth Rendell's latest yesterday, The Vault. Rendell is a superb writer, and she does something very clever with descriptions: She strips them entirey of verbs. They're visual compendiums, the highly idiocyncratic world as seen through her POV character's conceptual lens.
Have to keep chanting my mantra. First draft. First draft. First draft. Tension can be edited in on the second draft. But there won't be a second draft unless there's a first draft. So just keep plugging.
And I was floored. Beyond floored. Awed, astonished, amazed, grateful - quite literally to the point of speechlessness. Intimidated even.
Why? I asked. Naturally I was waiting for her to tell me some variation on, Because you are so wonderful. Because I believe in you. But all she said was, Money is only important to those who don't have it. Is that really true? In the end I suppose she was acting as a trustee for the Universe. The Universe, for some mysterious reason, is determined to be kind to me. I don't have a clue why that is; I've long since given up on the idea that there's anything particularly special about me beyond an obstinate compulsion to write it all down. Is testifying a type of courage or sheer pigheadedness? Dunno.
We've been on a Spike Lee bender. Spike Lee hates us 'cause he thinks we're white. Actually, Italians were being lynched all over the South right up through the 1920s and Hitler himself wasn't all that sure Wops deserved to sit next to members the Master Race during those long Valhalla assembly periods.
Even at his most self indulgent, Spike Lee is an interesting filmmaker. He's got a distinctive visual/audio stamp and except for Jungle Fever where the message is unequivocally, Stay away from our proud African men, Honky Beyatch, his social messages are curiously ambiguous.
We watched Clockers last night.
On the drive to I-town, RTT announces - only half facetiously - “I wanna be a clocker!”
“You do? Well, then I think you missed the point of the movie.”
“No, I didn't! Harvey Keitel fucked Strike over! Otherwise he would have been fine.”
“I don't see it that way. Harvey Keitel got Strike out of town. Strike literally didn't have the stomach for that job.”
Not sure how the Clockers analysis metamorphosed into a discussion of RTT's own personality and manipulative tendencies. Robin pushes emotional keys like Paganini played The Emperor Concerto, and not just with me - he does it with everyone. I thought Max set the high mark for girl bait in high school, but Robin's got his older brother beat on all accounts. Girls throw themselves at him. His latest conquest is the pretty daughter of one of Ithaca's richest families. As far as I can tell, he hasn't taken her out on a single date. She drives over a few times a week, they hole up in the Robintorium and have sex. At least they use condoms - I know because I get to clean up his room.
(Do I care that 17 year old Robin has sex with girls in my house? Not really. You can't fight every battle. The one I muster the big armies for is the Drug War.)
When I dropped him off at school, I told him, “You know, Robin, you're very, very charming. The proverbial he-can-charm-birds-out-of-trees kind of guy. But that will only take you up to age 35 or so. You've got to develop some other skills. If you never remember anything else I've ever told you, remember this: You spend more time being old than you do being young in this life.”
“Bye, Mom,” Robin said, climbing out of the car. “Love you.”
He'd forgotten what I'd said to him already if indeed he actually heard it.
B has taken the lead on the college application process. That's fine. B is generally an excellent father (except for the times when he disappears for a couple of weeks and RTT wonders whether he's a) In jail or b) has killed himself. And that hasn't happened since Jayne LeGros became the warden.)
RTT is clearly the most important thing in Ben's life. I can't say RTT is the most important in mine. I love the kid dearly and often wish some bus would try to run him over so I could throw myself between him and oncoming danger. But that big blow-out fight we had last summer took something out of me. I no longer think I can save RTT when the Universe prepares to kick him in the balls. And the Universe is gonna kick him in the balls. It's inevitable.
In other news, I got my hair cut á la Twiggy. I like the cut. Nobody else does.
Rutger, Dave's erstwhile cat, has become a fully integrated member of the household with his own personal mythology, (Born in Aix-en-Provence in 1814, Sir Rutger L'Orange's Platonic epistolary friendship with Lady Bianca Rogue - whom he always referred to as The Meezer - has become one of the literary touchstones of the French surrealist movement…) Dave is still dying of brain cancer and doesn't remember Rutger at all. I'm glad we rescued him -- he has an endearingly eccentric personality. He's still scared of the Great Outdoors however.
Hoping to finish first draft of ADA book by Friday.
My own writing is going really, really badly. I'm ten chapters into the novel now and still haven't tweaked the Stegner stories into a format I like. They've gotta be in this next week.
Not feeling the novel at all, just following the very elaborate plot treatment I drafted six months ago and hoping that sheer craft will propel it.
Connie Willis once told me, “Sure, you're talented. Who isn't? But if you don't learn the tricks, you're never going to amount to anything as a writer. Your life is too busy. You don't have the time.”
I think I may have literally have backed out of that conversation, making the sign of the cross.
Five years later, I began to realize, Know what? She was right.
I still don't know the tricks. Consequently, I write like a medium, channeling alternate realities 'cause I don't know simpler methods of evoking them.
Tension is the hardest thing to write.
You're writing the climactic scene where Our Hero gets the shit kicked out of him in a bar. You've got to stop yourself from writing biographies of the neo-Nazis hanging out in the bar. That charming and witty History of Bourbon? Fugettaboutit. Your sentences need to get shorter and shorter.
Then there's description. I don't even know why I bother to write description: It's the kind of thing an impatient reader skims, right? Was reading Ruth Rendell's latest yesterday, The Vault. Rendell is a superb writer, and she does something very clever with descriptions: She strips them entirey of verbs. They're visual compendiums, the highly idiocyncratic world as seen through her POV character's conceptual lens.
Have to keep chanting my mantra. First draft. First draft. First draft. Tension can be edited in on the second draft. But there won't be a second draft unless there's a first draft. So just keep plugging.
