The dormant month

For the first time in the history of this blog, I didn't write anything for the entire month of September. Perhaps you've noticed? Writing a post just to say that, yes, I too have noticed that nothing much has been happening whenever I open up an empty post window feels sort of dramatic and self-aggrandizing in itself, but a few of you have commented-- and I thank you for doing so. It's lovely, really, to feel as though what I do in this space is, in some way, miss-able.

The truth is that writing that abortion post seems to have taken a lot out of me-- intellectually, emotionally, and also in terms of my writerly self esteem. I didn't intend for that to be the case. I was so sure the whole event would come and go, rolling off my back as though I'd grown duck feathers. Friends who've been through similar experiences shook their heads and warned me when I swore it was going to be no big deal for me, but, you know, it was. It is. It is in ways both difficult and astoundingly awesome. I have new friends now. I have new readers now. I have new perspective now. But I also have new anxieties now. This, of course, is how it is.

Three months on down the road, I remain nothing but steadfast in my conviction that writing about my experience was the right thing to do, but -- if nowhere but in my own mind -- it seems to have raised the stakes of this blog. It may well be the most "important"-- whatever that means -- thing I've written to date, and it's certainly the most charged (emotionally, politically) thing I've written here. And it made me want to write better, more seriously, less glibly and with more of a real aim-- at what? I'm not yet sure.

Also, I've been busy. The offline conversations that post generated were plentiful. Some of have dwindled and, as I mentioned, some have kindled new and important friendships. I didn't know the sort of people it would bring into my life, the sort of people who'd respond to it in some way or another, the sort of people who'd take interest in me as a person because of the way I chose to handle a problem that isn't really so uncommon. But now that they're here and talking to me and challenging me and encouraging me, I can't really help but feel like something I wrote -- something I made up out of my own little brain -- has made my own world a little bit bigger. That's kind of amazing, right? And no one is more surprised, humbled and excited about that than I.

So, let's call this quiet period my Epoch of Re-assessment. I'm thinking about the possibility of going to school again. I'm thinking about the sort of platform I want this blog to be -- the sort of ideas I need to process. How a blog is good for processing but not necessarily all that great for instilling rigor -- insular and self-congratulatory as it can be. And I'm thinking about how a relationship between added rigor and my usual spin cycle of ideas might look -- the thoughts I express here and the sort of persona I'll need to cultivate if I want to make a go at... something more... serious?

I'm intimidated, frankly. Well-meaning folks in my most bare-bones support system have been very encouraging, indeed. With a handful of exceptions (exceptions that made me doubt my efficaciousness as a practitioner of written communication, but did not make me doubt the rightness of my choices, I might point out), I received remarkably kind feed-back on that abortion post. But somehow all the well-wishing has me feeling as though I have even more at stake every time I sit down to pound out something -- anything -- witty, wise, winsome or resolutely un-ambitious -- whatever. Yep. Pretty classic. I'm psyching myself out and I know it. I did the same thing when I was working on my manuscript in grad school. Once my classmates and professors began to respond positively to my work, I found I had to lock myself in my office for an entire semester just to keep their encouragement from staunching the flow, just to squeeze those few little coagulated, sticky poems from the turnip that is me. For me, living up to the accomplishments of which I'm sorta kinda proud is always harder than overcoming failures. And that's where I am now--scared it's all downhill from here. And, from here, I know, I've barely gotten started.

So, I'd ask the friends who've been asking after my writing to be patient with me, but that's not really the point. I love that they care whether I write and notice when I don't, for sure, but the standards I'm worried about living up to are mine. So, really, I'm better served trying to be patient with myself and to let the writing come when it comes and not to become exasperated when it doesn't. I am trying not to assign so much significance (to piddly ol' blog posts) that I can't even write fluffier fare -- because it seems silly to take this blog so seriously. But I am having trouble writing fluffier fare. And less fluffy things too.

Which isn't to say things aren't percolating. It's just a slow drip. And that's okay. This time around, moving from the dormant state into a thaw is not something I want to rush.

Mixing metaphors, however? I'm totally fine with that.

An Excerpt on the Topic of Loneliness

From Peter Trachtenberg's book, 7 Tattoos: A Memoir in the Flesh (parentheticals mine):

"Here are the benefits of being alone and celibate:

"You can read all night long and no one will nag you to turn off the light. (This one is particularly handy when your loneliness generates a savage bout with insomnia.)

"You can go off to Borneo on the spur of the moment without anyone wanting to know when you'll be back. (...assuming you have buttloads of superfluous income and a job that does not require your actual, physical presence.)

"You can prepare meals so disgusting you'd be ashamed to eat them in company: grill a slice of bologna till it curls up at the edges; fill the cup with baked beans; then top with a slice of Kraft American cheese and broil till melted. Serve with dill pickle and sliced tomato. (Or, eat nothing but lentils, raw, unsalted cashews and whole cartons of cherry tomatoes for a week at a time, if that bologna thing makes your nose wrinkle a little.)

"You can fart to your heart's content without having to say 'Excuse me,' though you may grow so accustomed to this that you find yourself doing it in public places -- on the line at your savings bank, for instance -- and getting nasty looks from strangers. (This one must be a guy thing. I'm not knocking farting... I just don't think it's a reason to be glad you're lonely and celibate. Nor is it something I really spend time considering one way or the other.)

"You can entertain religious delusions. (I'm pretty sure I can tell the future now via tarot cards and my pendulum.)

"You can spend your fury at the world by playing Einsturzende Neubauten and Nine Inch Nails at bone-splintering volumes and dancing along, vaulting and twitching and torquing as though electrocuted while shouting the lyrics you've improvised because you can't make out the real ones: 'I gave you no permission!/I give you no remission!/Newt Gingrich, burn in Hell!/Jesse Helms, burn in Hell!/Larry Wildmon, burn in Hell!/I'll know where to find you when I come callin'/In the row next to Hitler and old Joe Stalin.' (Yeah, I don't do this either. Though, Nina Simone winding up on my iPod's shuffle mix with the same damn song -- "The Other Woman," of course!-- twice in one day was enough to make me feel fairly dismayed with ol' Nina for a while.)

"You can fall asleep with a stack of books next to you on the bed, and if you're a heavy sleeper, you won't even wake up when you knock them to the floor. (I'm not a heavy sleeper. As much as I think books make reasonable bedfellows, that slushy paper crush in the middle of the night does nothing to help the insomnia issues. It only makes you feel guilty that you've injured your only friends.)

"You may come to know freedom from the tyranny of your penis, which thus dethroned becomes only a benign little tube for the expulsion of urine. (OK, I really can't relate here. Not on any level. Not with any analogous body parts. The ache in the throat. The ache in the heart. The ache behind the eyes. The ache in the lady parts. It all becomes one big seeping blister. One that even your sheets abrade. One that incites not a small measure of panic when you think you see the little red halo of infection developing around its outskirts. If crazy was infectious, that is.)

"In time you will know yourself so thoroughly that you finally realize what all those people had against you. (Yep. Yep. Pretty damn sick of what the inside of my head sounds like. This rather reminds me of how sick of myself I got when I was trying to write my grad school manuscript. God, I'm insufferable.)

"You will pray wholeheartedly to be changed. 'Make me good,' you'll call at night, down on your knees in a bedroom that is used only for sleeping, that smells of nothing but your cigarettes and the dust baking beneath the radiator. 'Please, God, just make me good.' (When you decide that being good is a lost cause, you just pray to be less stupid. Please, God. I like brains. I thought I had one. Maybe you can help me locate it? It appears misplaced!)

"On bad nights you can scoop up your cats and cuddle them shamelessly, even kissing them on the nose, though they usually dislike this and will try to shove you away with their paws. If worse comes to worst, you can press your face against their bodies and weep copiously into their fur." (I might consider it. If I had a cat. Wonder if my stuffed wombats would be amenable to becoming cat substitutes?)

Thank you, Mr. Trachtenberg.