Meredith Broussard, editor of the inconsistently wonderful and occasionally amazing Encyclopedia of Exes, says she shouldn’t have been surprised that when she asked a bunch of men to write about love, they wrote about sex. I wonder how true that is. Did she ask them to write about love? Or, as the subtitle says, was it a history of failed relationships?
When I think of my exes, sex looms large. Sifting through those memories is like sifting through a litter box. You scoop and you get the nuggets, everything else falls through for use the next time around.
Maybe that’s cynical. At least it’s disgusting.
How many people do you meet who mean very little to you? They come and they go but rarely do they touch you. To delve into failures with people who actually meant something to us is to confront our own shortcomings. This can be a tough undertaking, but necessary if we hope to better next time.
But in the meantime, before the next time, you’re just wallowing. It’s a lot easier (and fun) to concentrate on the fucking.
Scrutinizing a past relationship - not one that just devastated you, that you had to spend weeks or months deconstructing in order to move on - but a relationship long past, do people actually think about what a relationship meant in the larger fabric of their life?
Maybe it happens like Rob in High Fidelity. You realize nothing ever works right so you analyze everything all at once.
I don’t know. I just wrote this for the litter metaphor.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Another Confession
I was doing fine. I could sit at a keyboard and just push the cursor, exploring my thoughts and saving worry for later (you know worry, right? Worry about plot, structure, and syntax, worry over whether I’m any good, worry if I’ll ever be paid to do what I love). The worlds in my head proved fine places to spend hours of morning frolic.
Nine AM was like a doomsday bell so I decided to move to part-time. Instead of two or three hours of writing, I would do four or five. I'd wander into Books & Books around eleven, then I’d leave early, ensuring Andi and I had a healthy dinner. She’d been lax with her diet (I mean diet in an end-stage-renal-failure, dialysis, waiting-on-the-transplant-list way, not an her-ass-was-big way) and it had cost her.
I didn’t mention to Mitchell that I felt my marriage was coming loose from its railings, but he went for it. When I moved out a few months later and money became paramount, he was just as happy to keep me at full-time. He also offered stellar advice. There’s something good about working for a man, vs. The Man.
I’ve covered how the separation has affected my writing in some detail (like here and here), as well as the tentative steps to recovery. I had a string of days when I’d gotten up to write, and I believed the worst was behind me. Then I agreed to meet Andi for coffee.
I’ve looked back through my journal. Do you know how many times I’ve used the word “divorce?” Three. First was the hopeful and pathetic, “We’re not divorced yet.” Second was in a book title, File for Divorce in Florida Without Children. Finally, I was speaking of how I agreed to have coffee with Andi because I thought it would be odd otherwise. “Haven’t spoken in a while, how have you been? Great, sign these divorce papers.”
How many times have I used the word divorce in this blog? I can’t do a “find” search like it's a Word document, but I’m going out on a limb and claiming a big, fat goose egg. I’ll bet a week of dinners that I've talked separation, dissolution of marriage, failure, etc. the same as in my journal, but have never used the word divorce.
Weird, how you can anticipate a thing, even actively work toward it for months, yet shy from naming it.
Naming something doesn’t help get your mind around it. If there was a word describing how it feels to sit across from someone you’ve been in love with for years and seeing her as a closed door instead of a sanctuary, feeling a bubble of hurt and hate and resentment in your gut and wishing it outweighed the love and knowing it never will, would having a word which encompassed all that help me feel it? Let’s try calling it flarg.
“I sat there, holding my latte, feeling flarg as we discussed our divorce.”
“I looked at her for the first time in months, surprised how her hair had continued to grow despite my absence from her life. Flarg pounded through my veins as she sat down.”
“Our body language makes it obvious to everyone. I see them trying not to stare, pretending to read and talk about other things while they watch us share flarg.”
Nah, doesn’t help at all.
The morning after coffee, the snooze button was once again my best friend. Not a coincidence.
I wouldn’t call this writer’s block. When I think of writer’s block, I imagine staring at a blinking cursor wishing your brain could talk your fingers into moving it, or someone sitting at an old-school typewriter, pulling page after page from the roller and crumpling them in frustration; I’ve just been sleeping.
Whether I go to bed at nine PM or two in the morning, I’ll still hit the snooze button for hours. Soon I realize I’ve squandered my writing time and need to get to my job. Getting out of bed for my job is too depressing to contemplate, so I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, purring cat on my belly, trying to cajole myself out of bed.
I watched South Park on DVD last night until exhaustion took me some time past midnight, but my eyes popped open just before my alarm rang at five. I hit snooze. I lay there, remembering when every morning felt like a reward, a fresh page, a new chance to get it right. I asked myself what I wanted to do with my life. I stopped snoozing.
The few paragraphs of fiction I pecked this morning took an hour and fifteen minutes. I couldn’t believe how much time had passed, how little I’d done, but I know when it’s time to move on to other things… like whiny blogs.
Not much, but it’s a start. Again.
Nine AM was like a doomsday bell so I decided to move to part-time. Instead of two or three hours of writing, I would do four or five. I'd wander into Books & Books around eleven, then I’d leave early, ensuring Andi and I had a healthy dinner. She’d been lax with her diet (I mean diet in an end-stage-renal-failure, dialysis, waiting-on-the-transplant-list way, not an her-ass-was-big way) and it had cost her.
I didn’t mention to Mitchell that I felt my marriage was coming loose from its railings, but he went for it. When I moved out a few months later and money became paramount, he was just as happy to keep me at full-time. He also offered stellar advice. There’s something good about working for a man, vs. The Man.
I’ve covered how the separation has affected my writing in some detail (like here and here), as well as the tentative steps to recovery. I had a string of days when I’d gotten up to write, and I believed the worst was behind me. Then I agreed to meet Andi for coffee.
I’ve looked back through my journal. Do you know how many times I’ve used the word “divorce?” Three. First was the hopeful and pathetic, “We’re not divorced yet.” Second was in a book title, File for Divorce in Florida Without Children. Finally, I was speaking of how I agreed to have coffee with Andi because I thought it would be odd otherwise. “Haven’t spoken in a while, how have you been? Great, sign these divorce papers.”
How many times have I used the word divorce in this blog? I can’t do a “find” search like it's a Word document, but I’m going out on a limb and claiming a big, fat goose egg. I’ll bet a week of dinners that I've talked separation, dissolution of marriage, failure, etc. the same as in my journal, but have never used the word divorce.
Weird, how you can anticipate a thing, even actively work toward it for months, yet shy from naming it.
Naming something doesn’t help get your mind around it. If there was a word describing how it feels to sit across from someone you’ve been in love with for years and seeing her as a closed door instead of a sanctuary, feeling a bubble of hurt and hate and resentment in your gut and wishing it outweighed the love and knowing it never will, would having a word which encompassed all that help me feel it? Let’s try calling it flarg.
“I sat there, holding my latte, feeling flarg as we discussed our divorce.”
“I looked at her for the first time in months, surprised how her hair had continued to grow despite my absence from her life. Flarg pounded through my veins as she sat down.”
“Our body language makes it obvious to everyone. I see them trying not to stare, pretending to read and talk about other things while they watch us share flarg.”
Nah, doesn’t help at all.
The morning after coffee, the snooze button was once again my best friend. Not a coincidence.
I wouldn’t call this writer’s block. When I think of writer’s block, I imagine staring at a blinking cursor wishing your brain could talk your fingers into moving it, or someone sitting at an old-school typewriter, pulling page after page from the roller and crumpling them in frustration; I’ve just been sleeping.
Whether I go to bed at nine PM or two in the morning, I’ll still hit the snooze button for hours. Soon I realize I’ve squandered my writing time and need to get to my job. Getting out of bed for my job is too depressing to contemplate, so I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, purring cat on my belly, trying to cajole myself out of bed.
I watched South Park on DVD last night until exhaustion took me some time past midnight, but my eyes popped open just before my alarm rang at five. I hit snooze. I lay there, remembering when every morning felt like a reward, a fresh page, a new chance to get it right. I asked myself what I wanted to do with my life. I stopped snoozing.
The few paragraphs of fiction I pecked this morning took an hour and fifteen minutes. I couldn’t believe how much time had passed, how little I’d done, but I know when it’s time to move on to other things… like whiny blogs.
Not much, but it’s a start. Again.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
A New Face at Books & Books
When independent booksellers rant about Amazon, non-bookseller’s eyes tend to glaze over. Blah-blah-blah, the money you spend at the A-word doesn’t go back to your community, yada-yada-yada, the A-word uses bullying buying and pricing tactics, loddy-la, doddy-da, when’s the last time the A-word helped raise money for your daughter’s school?
Well then, let’s not dwell on how the A-word devalues books. Instead, let’s focus on the wrongs Amazon has done to me.
If you’re unfamiliar with how schools, churches, synagogues, and businesses approach Books & Books, it takes one of two forms. They’ll give us a list (often riddled with misspelled, incorrectly pluralized, or just plain wrong titles; misspelled, mismatched, or plain old wrong authors; out of print books, and a whole host of other fun quirks which amount to a time-consuming research project) of titles they’d like to order. We return these (corrected) lists with the prices we offer.
Take a look at the last book you bought. See the price on the corner, inside the dustjacket? How about above the barcode? The publisher set that price, not us.
Do cars come with prices painted inside the doors? Clothes with prices sewn into the seams? Electronics with prices etched into the corners? No. I’ve worked women’s retail. The mark up on jewelry, handbags, shoes, and dresses would make you sick. If you buy last season’s Donna Karen at 85% off, here’s the kicker: the store still makes a tidy profit off your purchase. Imagine how much the store made off those dresses at full retail.
Making so much money on other items is also why the A-Word can afford to sell books at a loss. But let me stop myself before I go into the other reasons Amazon has lower margins than bricks-and-mortar businesses and just say that our margins are razor thin. If someone balks at purchasing the titles on the list I’ve returned to them, the best I can do is discount them 20% (assuming we've gotten our full discount from the publisher; if the list is chock full of DVDs or technical books... ah, skip it).
Then, silence. When I follow up, I hear, “We got them cheaper on Amazon.” Thanks for your support.
Books & Books loses money paying me for the time I spent researching, without a sale to show for it. The multitude of other concerns on my plate suffer while I work for the possibility of sale. In five years, this has happened more than I care to admit. I even started a file on it, in case I ever waver in my hatred of Amazon.
Sometimes, hours of research isn’t necessary. Four hundred copies of a single title? Here’s our price. Oh, Amazon’s is better? Thanks for playing.
I’m called the Quartermaster. Used to be, if you ordered a book at Books & Books, I was the one who got it. Whether the order came through the internet, a school, a bookfair, an event, an author appearance, a customer in the store, a reading group, or a gap on the shelves created by a sale – the Quartermaster took care of it. As you can imagine, this kind of sweeping responsibility only allows for so much attention to detail. We have another buyer now for backlist and individual customer orders, but I still don’t have time to chase down sales.
Enter our newly-hired Corporate and Educational Sales Director. Don’t like my 20% discount? Why don’t you talk to LD; maybe she can help.
While it’s still a team effort, LD’s purpose is to schmooze clients and negotiate rates with publishers. In a few short months, she’s stopped several customers I’ve lost in the past from going with the dreaded A-Word. The margins are still thin as threads, but as she educates customers on the value of buying locally, we’ve begun re-capturing sales.
Talk about support all you want; the only real support is where your wallet goes.
Well then, let’s not dwell on how the A-word devalues books. Instead, let’s focus on the wrongs Amazon has done to me.
If you’re unfamiliar with how schools, churches, synagogues, and businesses approach Books & Books, it takes one of two forms. They’ll give us a list (often riddled with misspelled, incorrectly pluralized, or just plain wrong titles; misspelled, mismatched, or plain old wrong authors; out of print books, and a whole host of other fun quirks which amount to a time-consuming research project) of titles they’d like to order. We return these (corrected) lists with the prices we offer.
Take a look at the last book you bought. See the price on the corner, inside the dustjacket? How about above the barcode? The publisher set that price, not us.
Do cars come with prices painted inside the doors? Clothes with prices sewn into the seams? Electronics with prices etched into the corners? No. I’ve worked women’s retail. The mark up on jewelry, handbags, shoes, and dresses would make you sick. If you buy last season’s Donna Karen at 85% off, here’s the kicker: the store still makes a tidy profit off your purchase. Imagine how much the store made off those dresses at full retail.
Making so much money on other items is also why the A-Word can afford to sell books at a loss. But let me stop myself before I go into the other reasons Amazon has lower margins than bricks-and-mortar businesses and just say that our margins are razor thin. If someone balks at purchasing the titles on the list I’ve returned to them, the best I can do is discount them 20% (assuming we've gotten our full discount from the publisher; if the list is chock full of DVDs or technical books... ah, skip it).
Then, silence. When I follow up, I hear, “We got them cheaper on Amazon.” Thanks for your support.
Books & Books loses money paying me for the time I spent researching, without a sale to show for it. The multitude of other concerns on my plate suffer while I work for the possibility of sale. In five years, this has happened more than I care to admit. I even started a file on it, in case I ever waver in my hatred of Amazon.
Sometimes, hours of research isn’t necessary. Four hundred copies of a single title? Here’s our price. Oh, Amazon’s is better? Thanks for playing.
I’m called the Quartermaster. Used to be, if you ordered a book at Books & Books, I was the one who got it. Whether the order came through the internet, a school, a bookfair, an event, an author appearance, a customer in the store, a reading group, or a gap on the shelves created by a sale – the Quartermaster took care of it. As you can imagine, this kind of sweeping responsibility only allows for so much attention to detail. We have another buyer now for backlist and individual customer orders, but I still don’t have time to chase down sales.
Enter our newly-hired Corporate and Educational Sales Director. Don’t like my 20% discount? Why don’t you talk to LD; maybe she can help.
While it’s still a team effort, LD’s purpose is to schmooze clients and negotiate rates with publishers. In a few short months, she’s stopped several customers I’ve lost in the past from going with the dreaded A-Word. The margins are still thin as threads, but as she educates customers on the value of buying locally, we’ve begun re-capturing sales.
Talk about support all you want; the only real support is where your wallet goes.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The List
“If you have the ability to really open yourself to love and dig down in it, maybe you are in for some trouble if you are not lucky enough to pick the right person. Is it random? I think you just have to make these great big mistakes to learn. And then I think the key is to think hard about what you want to have and want to avoid before you fall in love again. Once you are in love I don’t think you have a lot of choices. You just have to ride it out.”
Isabel Gillies, Happens Every Day
I’ve heard you should get married three times, once in your twenties, once in your thirties, and once in your forties when you finally know what you really want. Perhaps that’s where “third time’s the charm” comes from.
Isabel Gillies’s quote has been crawling around inside my skull like a monkey since I read it (the skull is a cage and the mind is a monkey; believe it). It terrified me. Am I making a mistake throwing myself into a new relationship because I didn’t take the time to think about what I wanted? It doesn’t matter. I’m in love, and now it’s too late to do anything but ride it out.
Except I did think about what I wanted.
Months ago, I thought of what I loved most about Andi and made a detailed list of fifty-five deal breakers my next love needed to win my heart, as brief as number ten (“Playfulness”) and as detailed as number five (“She won’t need to fill the air with stupid bullshit; we will share silence, peace, and stillness, and I will enjoy that sharing more than I enjoy being alone”). If you knew how I enjoy my alone time – I’m a writer, after all, in love with my own thoughts in many ways – you’d know how tough number five is to fill.
Some parts of the list are shallow (“A kick-ass body”) but parts of me are shallow, too. You’ll also find: “There will be some broken things inside her because someone too well-adjusted will not reflect me, but she will not be a broken person.”
I thought the list set the bar impossibly high, insuring I’d be alone long enough to get my head straight. From time to time I’d return to the list, imagining who she would be. I had to remove one requirement: “in some ways, her parents will be as responsible for raising me as my own were.” I met Stacy and Jim at nineteen, and I doubt fifty-year-old Aaron will be as different from forty-year-old Aaron as thirty-year-old Aaron was from twenty-year-old Aaron (God bless you for following that). I had coffee with Stacy last week. When friends ask how it went, I answer “bittersweet.” She’s an amazing woman, but no longer my mother-in-law. Jim and I resolved some father-and-son issues we should have resolved in our biological families, but he is no longer my father-in-law. It’s a big loss, maybe as big as losing Andi.
In-laws aside, reading the list now makes me feel like Sally in the movie version of Practical Magic, creating an impossible list of qualities for a husband so she'll never be cursed with love, then having him show up on her doorstep . . . Becky scored a fifty out of fifty-four.
I suppose you’re wondering what she missed. Well, she can’t taste a dish I’ve made and tell me the exact ingredient it lacks, she doesn’t have a variegated palate (although she’s tried a bunch of new foods and loved them, so we’ll see), and she’s not five-seven or taller. The fourth is between me and God, but let’s say she’s added bonuses I didn’t dare hope for which make up for these, and then some.
It’s like I drew a rough sketch of my idealized mate, never knowing I was drawing Becky. She stepped in and provided the colors. She has the qualities I need in a person I never would have envisioned for myself. This is so different than I remember falling the first time. Instead of seeing a perfect woman, I see Becky’s faults and weaknesses. I see her.
And I love it all.
I’m ready to ride it out. I just hope it’s the ride of my life.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Ownership
My best Saturday mornings are spent outside with coffee and a book. I keep meaning to pack a thermos and bike to a certain stretch of park a few blocks away so I can read underneath the shade of huge banyans, but so far the small porch outside the Treehouse door has suited me just fine. As I sit on the low stucco walls, eye level with the Gables' thick foliage, the sun makes even the coldest mornings tolerable.
A stray joined me this past Saturday. A female calico, skinny and fearless, a frequent visitor before Minime moved in. Something’s happened to one of her eyes. I’ve seen plenty of one-eyed cats before, but none coping with a recent injury. The way she canted her head at everything, so tentative in her steps and leaps, it broke my heart.
Her awkward jump to the wall beside me toppled a low table outside my door and sent my Zephyr Holdings, Inc mug tumbling down the slanted roof (I have an affinity for fictional propaganda: Dunder - Mifflin mugs, Vandalay Industries t-shirts, Stewart / Colbert bumper stickers). The noise startled the poor thing. She dug her claws into the roof, neck cocked at that odd angle as she tried to sweep her head in every direction at once.
I spoke to her in soothing tones as I set the table right. I told her she was fine and hadn’t done anything wrong as I stretched over the roof to retrieve my mug, which thankfully stopped short of rolling off.
I realized that for knocking over a plant and a nearly full cup of water (even though it was sitting out overnight and her water was fresh, she just had to stick her face in my cup…), Minime won herself a stamped foot and a sharp, accusatory call of her name. Not only that, she had to endure some withering admonishments while I mopped up water or cleaned up spilled dirt.
Some people treat what belongs to them negligibly, taking care only with things loaned or borrowed. Some prize their possessions but abuse things which aren’t theirs. I try to care for both equally, but I tend to treat that which doesn’t belong to me more delicately.
There’s got to be a metaphor for relationships in there somewhere.
When it comes to Becky’s son, have I discovered a well of patience I didn’t suspect simply because he isn’t mine? Or am I channeling those few moments when my own father took the time to teach me something?
What happens when I stop wooing Becky, when I start feeling entitled to her company?
To me part of being in love is looking with new eyes, making her feel special every day. My point is more about civility and respect, treating someone as an important new addition to your life instead of the other half of your self. I love that Becky and I have yet to exchange a harsh word (apart from an incident at work with a price gun which I won’t get into). I know I can’t expect that to last forever, but I think I’ve learned something about relationships which will prolong the honeymoon.
No one belongs to you. Even if they give their heart and soul, they are still an individual. Any time you win from them is grace, to be respected, cherished, and, if you’re lucky, nurtured into future moments.
Everything in this life is on loan.
A stray joined me this past Saturday. A female calico, skinny and fearless, a frequent visitor before Minime moved in. Something’s happened to one of her eyes. I’ve seen plenty of one-eyed cats before, but none coping with a recent injury. The way she canted her head at everything, so tentative in her steps and leaps, it broke my heart.
Her awkward jump to the wall beside me toppled a low table outside my door and sent my Zephyr Holdings, Inc mug tumbling down the slanted roof (I have an affinity for fictional propaganda: Dunder - Mifflin mugs, Vandalay Industries t-shirts, Stewart / Colbert bumper stickers). The noise startled the poor thing. She dug her claws into the roof, neck cocked at that odd angle as she tried to sweep her head in every direction at once.
I spoke to her in soothing tones as I set the table right. I told her she was fine and hadn’t done anything wrong as I stretched over the roof to retrieve my mug, which thankfully stopped short of rolling off.
I realized that for knocking over a plant and a nearly full cup of water (even though it was sitting out overnight and her water was fresh, she just had to stick her face in my cup…), Minime won herself a stamped foot and a sharp, accusatory call of her name. Not only that, she had to endure some withering admonishments while I mopped up water or cleaned up spilled dirt.
Some people treat what belongs to them negligibly, taking care only with things loaned or borrowed. Some prize their possessions but abuse things which aren’t theirs. I try to care for both equally, but I tend to treat that which doesn’t belong to me more delicately.
There’s got to be a metaphor for relationships in there somewhere.
When it comes to Becky’s son, have I discovered a well of patience I didn’t suspect simply because he isn’t mine? Or am I channeling those few moments when my own father took the time to teach me something?
What happens when I stop wooing Becky, when I start feeling entitled to her company?
To me part of being in love is looking with new eyes, making her feel special every day. My point is more about civility and respect, treating someone as an important new addition to your life instead of the other half of your self. I love that Becky and I have yet to exchange a harsh word (apart from an incident at work with a price gun which I won’t get into). I know I can’t expect that to last forever, but I think I’ve learned something about relationships which will prolong the honeymoon.
No one belongs to you. Even if they give their heart and soul, they are still an individual. Any time you win from them is grace, to be respected, cherished, and, if you’re lucky, nurtured into future moments.
Everything in this life is on loan.
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