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mallorys_camera
So I f-locked my LJ the other day. No, not for reasons of discretion – although one might reasonably argue that I could benefit from more discretion. I name names, I leave breadcrumbs, both of which could open me up to legal action, I suppose, or make potential employers write Loose Canon! on my dossier in bright red Sharpie.
Many years ago, a woman with whom I was friendly – not a friend (big difference) – asked me, “So, if you’ve always wanted to write, how come you don’t?”
We were on our way to Calistoga to one of the fabulous spas for an expensive day of beauty treatments, which I almost certainly would not have been able to afford as a writer. In those days, I made $175,000 a year, brokered in industrial secrets, and didn’t write for two years in my journal. Was I meiserable? Yes, I was!
But that was Reason # 1 why I didn't write.
Reason # 2? I suppose I’ve always though my intrinsic value is as an Outsider. The ultimate Stranger At the Party spying on things. Writing them up from the Outsider’s perspective. I can actually write really commercially – for which read saleably – but I prefer not to. The operative fantasy has always been that I was writing for like-minded souls in some unimaginable future when everybody views the period of time I happen to be living through as I view it now.
I have always wanted to write. From the time I learned to read which was when I was three. And nobody every taught me to read, I taught myself.
There’s a short story by HG Wells I’ve always loved. It’s called The Door In the Wall. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist, a lonely child, sees a green door in a low garden wall, opens in, wanders through into a land where he has amazing, magical adventures and is very happy, but eventually – as is always the case in these stories – decides life behind the Door doesn’t have enough dramatic tension and leaves. Don’t you just want to fucking slap these protagonists across the face? Stay! Talking lions, geomancer antelopes – life will never get this good again! But invariably they leave, and then spend the rest of their lives searching for what they’ve voluntarily let vanish.
After Wells’ protagonist decamps, he becomes very successful. But his success is blighted: he’s always searching for that Door In the Wall. Glimpses it at intervals – generally from the windows of his limousine when he’s on the way to some great triumph. I can’t possibly tell the chauffeur to stop, he thinks. They’re making me Prime Minister! One night, finally, the longing for the Door and the garden supersedes everything else. He goes out walking, sees the Door! Opens it, goes through – and dies because this Door is merely a maintenance shack for some railroad tracks and the train is coming through.
I think about this story a lot.
I think about the bad choices I’ve made over the years. I am, as Faithful Readers know, rather the poster child for Bad Choices.
But then I think, insofar as this marginal lifestyle is something I chose – and it is to a greater rather than a lesser extent – I chose it because I wanted the opportunity to pass in and out of the Door at will, in and out of that garden…
And I do.
And I'm not dead yet.
The woman who was not a friend went on to become the Executive Director of a well-known Bay Area non-profit. I suppose it does useful work, but like all organizations of that ilk exists mainly to perpetuate itself. I imagine she’s starting to have Major Health Issues now due to her alcoholism. Never married, never had children, but she is successful. She owns an historic 19th century San Francisco house. The walls of her living room are bright bordello scarlet.
No, the reason I f-locked was because the Russian spambots have gone quite out of control in the last couple of months. Where do they come from? When I was ghostwriting the great Legal Opus for the AZ Lawyer Boys, I ran across an organization known as the Russian Business Network which is kind of Black Hat Central – every banner ad you idly click dumps Russian Business Network spyware on to your machine, and then at night your computer becomes part of their zombie computer chain. No, I swear – it’s true.
Anyway, in an effort to minimize my exposure to the Russian Business Network – I mean, you know, I need my computer at night to bittorrent Season 5 of the British version of Skins – I decided to lock my LJ.
What I was not prepared for was the 12 emails from people I’ve never met and who aren’t on LJ, saying, Noo-ooo-ooo. I read you faithfully. I look forward to reading you…
I mean, they’re probably all members of the MPAA looking to bust me for copyright infringement, or outreach coordinators for the Russian Business Network, or FBI bureaucrats trying to harvest as much info as they possibly can as the Patriot Act nears its death thralls. But I’m as vain as anyone. One has to assume that if 12 people actually took the time to write, there are others who read without writing – and a quick look at the stats confirms: there are a lot of people who read this drivel.
Huh.
So, okay, the compromise: I will leave the most recent month mostly unlocked. Mostly.
You can always get an LJ account, you know, and ask to be put on the f-list. You don’t actually have to keep an LJ yourself.
In other news, I chaperoned at an RTT school dance last night – very sweet! RTT himself, of course, would never come within a million miles of a school even at which I was chaperon – and bought an actual book at full retail price yesterday from Buffalo Books because they are the last indie bookstore in Ithaca and they are going out of business. The Best American Short Stories 2010, edited by Richard Russo, a favorite novelist of mine. It’s inspired me to begin writing a high lit, New Yorker-ish short story which, of course, no one will ever publish.
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Thanks
Date: 2011-02-12 04:31 pm (UTC)Re: Thanks
Date: 2011-02-13 11:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-12 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-02-12 06:35 pm (UTC)My silly phone/photo posts are open, but the rest stays locked down!
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Date: 2011-02-12 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-02-13 11:51 am (UTC)Those two people weren't about to join LJ. But they did read what I wrote here.
For the first three years I was writing here, I didn't have any LJ "friends" and then gradually began acquiring them. Now those relationships are very precious to me.
But I essentially view everything I write as messages in bottles washing up on foreign shores. It's not written for LJ friends per se.
I'm a writer: I want readers.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 01:28 pm (UTC)And it pleases me and flatters me that people exist who see some value in it.
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Date: 2011-02-13 11:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 01:32 pm (UTC)I do not need the students reading such things.
thanks for letting me in
Date: 2011-02-12 08:18 pm (UTC)I"m a real slow reader, so who knows when I'll be finished the book.
Re: thanks for letting me in
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