It's 4:30 a.m. and I'm drinking ginger tea with milk & honey, listening to the train. I can see the red light on Broadway two blocks away through my white floral burnout curtains from Ikea. Now it's green. Someone is walking below, oh now they are coming up the stairs so it must be my bartender neighbor. A wind is picking up, now it's still.
Haven't blogged in more than a week though I was really enjoying it- what happened? What happened was I wrote an entry that I decided not to post. Why not? Oh, it sounded too serious, and it referenced my sexuality. This was after seeing the Lena Dunham film "Tiny Furniture." I was delightfully surprised to see a diary show up in the film. Aura, just home to live with her mother and younger sister after graduating college, finds and reads her mom's diary, written at the same age that Aura is now. I loved how the diary brought them closer, Aura asking her mom, as they are snuggled in bed together, who this guy was, and that one, and how talking about this stuff seems to make it easier for Aura to tell her mom that she had sex with the guy she was with that night. "Where?" her mom asks, "Here?!" (aghast.) Aura says, "no." "His place?" "No." "In the street?" "No... In a pipe... in the street." "Wasn't it cold?" asks her Mom.
I haven't seen Dunham's new HBO series, "Girls," where apparently sex is as random, awkward and unsexy as it was in "Tiny Furniture." But knowing that she is sharing those stories it easier for me, to read out of my teen diary to strangers. But what about to daughters?
I'm still looking for my blog voice. If it can only be light and funny, the entries may have long spaces in between. Maybe that's ok. And I'm looking for my website voice too, trying to find the right tone that blends playfulness with professionalism. At first the subtitle under my name was, "artist, writer, dreamer, community builder." Now it says, "compulsive chronicler, accidental artist, playful person." We'll see if that sticks. "Compulsive chronicler" sounds more accurate than 'writer.' Writers write articles and books and novels and poems. "Compulsive chroniclers" record what they did and didn't do that day, the weather, the quality of light in the flowers, leaves and sky (which could turn into a poem with a little effort but the C.C. just needs to touch the pen to page in familiar repeating loops and slashes, not to labor over making something), how the hair is looking and whether to make an appointment, who she saw and talked to, what she read and maybe what she ate. (bagel with cream cheese, turkey, slice of red onion, tomato and avocado.)
When I couldn't sleep, I reached for my phone to check e-mail and read the blog of a young woman in my business foundations class. It's a travel blog, and refreshingly outrospective.
I'm still reading, "The Midnight Disease" about "The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain."Author Alice Flaherty cites Kay Redfield Jamison's work, saying that "writers are ten times more likely to be manic-depressive than the rest of the population and poets are a remarkable forty times more likely." ! Certainly I'm not manic-depressive, or bipolar as we say now, but I definitely have my ups and downs. When I'm down, it's difficult to pick up the phone. For example, I still haven't talked to my high school best friend, though we are now e-mailing, texting and leaving phone messages.
"Expression is the opposite of depression." Laura Perls. Read that line decades ago and it has always stayed with me. My young checker at Trader Joe's today said she can't go a day without writing. That was just before she tossed my salmon salad to the floor. I really must stop engaging customer service people in meaningful conversations. But it does make me wonder about this town... the rain and fog, the easy access to favorite writers (just bought my ticket to Alison Bechdel), and books... I parked behind an "I'd Rather Be Reading Flannery O'Conner" bumper sticker yesterday at Curves, and found the woman inside. We exchanged favorite stories and lines in between the recorded, "Change stations now!"
I got my diary story back from Susan- 25 pgs. down to 5. She did a great job with it and I'm surprised at how the diary story is different from my memory. I'll meet with her Wednesday to work on delivery.
And I'll keep listening to those old David Cassidy songs.
