Grace Under Pressure

DREAMED that L'Wren Scott had styled Ben and turned him into a kind of proto-Bradley Cooper (an actor, by the way, I don't find even remotely attractive in waking life.) She'd give him pigtails! And they looked good! Of course, now that he was handsome, Ben had developed a friendlier, less caustic personality.

Talked a bit with L'Wren in the dream. She was friendly, cheerful, disarming without being the slightest bit smarmy.

Of course, I knew she was dead but I thought it would be in extremely bad taste to bring that fact up with her.

###

As negative as I may feel about Pollyanna, it's not in my best interests to leave now. For one thing, I don't have a clue about what's supposed to come next. I was going to begin thinking seriously about all that in May. For another, I have a social life here, which is something I haven't had in many years. It's unlikely that my relationships with either S1 or S2 are going to evolve into partnership or marriage, but they have deepened and likely will continue to deepen. I have a small coterie of other pals too, whose company I enjoy and would miss. Plus now that I have wheels, I can go to yoga classes and writing groups, I can pack up my writing gear and hang out in coffee houses. I suffered through the winter; it seems too bad to deprive myself of the opportunity to enjoy the spring, which I'm sure is enchanting in the Hudson River Valley.

So-o I told Albany I'd be willing to stay on through July if Pollyanna can come up with an alternative project for me to work on.

Unlikely Pollyanna will though. I was the only person working there who could write grants. And Albany won't let me write a grant to fund myself.

For the present, I'm on a one week administrative leave until Pollyanna gets it together to yea or nay officially. In the likely event that Pollyanna can't get it together, I'll have another 23 days of paid time to figure out something.

###

So, yeah, paid vacation. Whoopee.

All my money went into the purchase of the car, so I'm too broke to actually do anything except hang out. In fact, I've spent the past five days setting new records for indolence and doing absolutely nothing. That's saying something because I have an enormous capacity for watching Bad Television and sitting around with my eyes unfocused. It's not as though I don't have a thousand things to do either, much of it the kind of bureaucratic shit that involves pursuing official sanction by filling out forms etc. Exactly the kind of shit that bites you in the ass if you don't meet deadlines. Plus, you know, my own creative projects.

Met up with S2 for drinks last night. "Well, it's only natural for you to feel depressed," he said.

I was vaguely shocked. "Am I depressed?"

"Well, look at you. When was the last time you washed your hair?"

"Three days ago."

S2 smiled and shrugged.

"But I never wash my hair more often than twice a week --"

"Maybe you're chronically depressed."

Impeccable logic.

###

I wouldn't know if I was depressed or not because it's not like I ever feel my own emotions anyway. For the past couple of days, I've been feeling L'Wren Scott's emotions. The story of her suicide hit me very hard, probably because I know firsthand how absolutely devastating it is to lose a business you've struggled to build. It's like losing a child. It's a loss that's crippling on every conceivable level.

Of course, it's also a loss that millions of people go through every year as a matter of course, and that in 2009 -- the year the Little Store went down -- many millions more endured as part of the Great Recession. A sizable number of those people shrug, pick up the pieces, and immediately start reassembling them into another business.

I didn't.

Part of the reason was my age.

But part of that is the very personal attachment I had to that particular business. Which is a rather un-businesslike thing to feel about something that's essentially designed to function as an impersonal revenue stream.

Max used to tell me, "What you've set up here isn't really a retail operation. It's a museum to your own personality."

He had a point. But, hey! It worked. Until it didn't work. We were a "destination," as they say in the trade. People used to come from as far away as British Columbia just to visit my store. And to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium too, of course.

The Little Store went down just before social media exploded, and part of me really believes I could have kept it all together, navigated it through the stormy straits if I'd had that star to guide by.

Water under the bridge,and it avails me naught to think those kinds of things especially when I could be watching Season 6 of The Real Housewives of New York City.

There's no denying I've been in retrograde ever since the Little Store closed.

Not sure that I'll ever begin moving forward again.

(Maybe sideways. Sideways is a more interesting vantage point anyway.)

It never occurred to me to kill myself when my business hit the rocks though. Part of that is because I'm a mother, and I couldn't ever do that to my kids. It's bad enough that I saddled them with an eccentric maternal unit. To turn them into the offspring of a suicide with a thousand unanswered questions -- the most pressing of which is: Will I do this too? -- seems monstrously selfish to me.

But also, I believe -- yeah, yeah, most irrationally -- in reincarnation. This is the lesson plan for this time around. These are the lessons you're supposed to learn. If you don't learn them, you'll have to repeat the class.

So... Grace under pressure.

Ironic, isn't it, that Hemingway, the guy who invented the phrase "grace under pressure," killed himself when the pressure got intense. Literally shot his mouth off. One can hardly help speculating that this represented the author's unconscious assessment of the merits of his own work: All I've ever done is shoot my mouth off...