just what holiday is this???
Since Jay came and went already, and since we had a quasi-Thanksgiving dinner with him last Friday whereat I positively stuffed myself, it simply doesn't feel like Thanksgiving anymore. Now I'm already on to Christmas!! Last evening, I put out all the Christmas stuff except the lights and the tree, so certain am I that Jay will finally be moved in here by Christmas. I got jolly all of a sudden-like and up everything went. So we shall see.
However, it is still just Thanksgiving and somewhere yesterday, bobbing up in the insanity that I lovingly refer to as "my brain," I remembered that I was being counted upon by my family to make the cranberry sauce and hadn't even gone to the store yet and bought the cranberries. So, yes, I went to the grocery store late Wednesday afternoon -- that final food shopping frenzy, day-before-Thanksgiving madness was well underway.
I had come from the club where I'd done a couple miles on the treadmill and 20 minutes of rowing and no shower, so my hair really looked awesome at the grocery store, as you can no doubt imagine. [See some sort of post below about how incredibly vain she is about her hair! -- Ed.] But I had a really great time. I am capable of having a really great time at the grocery store since, being the lofty writer/artist I've been for so many decades, there have been plenty of times (even this year) when I haven't had enough money to go grocery shopping. If I can afford bread, lettuce, peanut butter, bananas, a cheap bottle of red wine and food for the cats, I "grin & bear it" as they say, and consider myself blessed.
But this past week, a delightful royalty check arrived in my mailbox and, after I paid my WHOPPING cell phone bill from my week in Paris, and paid whatever I could on my credit card from my week in Paris, I had plenty of cash leftover to do what I love best: go to the grocery store and put whatever it is I want into the cart, knowing that I can pay for it -- thanks to the many, many nameless, faceless people all over the world who, for whatever wonderful reason, feel compelled to buy my books.
When I got home, I started the cranberry sauce right away and the smell of it boiling on the stove (cloves, oranges), in a nanosecond, brought Christmas into the air. I was so joyful. Me, the cats, the birds, the squirrels, the rabbit, the groundhog, the raccoons & skunks around the backyard -- all of us had plenty to eat for now and Jay is eventually going to get here from Denver and stay here, and it felt like it was going to be a really great Christmas. So I did 4 loads of laundry and started putting up Christmas stuff.
I also downloaded Sting's new Christmas CD, If On A Winter's Night. It's one of those haunting sort of Madrigal-type collections of old English songs. But it immediately brought to mind one of my all-time favorite albums from my remarkably bleak adolescence, Angel Clare by Art Garfunkel, so I immediately downloaded that, as well. And I have to say, gang, it has held up well; it is still an incredibly gorgeous album. It truly is. If you are unfamiliar with it, you should check it out. If you recall it dimly from the glorious days of your bygone youth, you should reacquaint yourself with it posthaste. It is just so freakin' beautiful. And I don't think it's just because it brings to mind a period of my life that I did not think I would survive, and so it has a cerain personal poignancy for me. It actually is really just a beautiful album.
When I was 15 and in the mental hospital, I used to play several of the songs from the album on my guitar. "Down in the Willow Garden," "Mary was an Only Child," "Barbara Allen," -- to name a few. These are very sad songs and it upset my social worker that I would sing these songs (I was in that place b/c among other things, I had attempted suicide and the sorrow implicit in these particular songs compounds sorrow on top of sorrow). But anyway, I thought the social worker (and everyone else who worked there) came from some other planet that I couldn't figure out how to get to, so I just ignored her. I recall vividly, though, one of the staff members in that place asking me what I wanted to be "when I grew up" and, when I replied that I wanted to go to New York and be a singer-songwriter, he told me straight out to get realistic and give it up. Of course I used to hear this all the time from my family, so I was used to hearing it, but it is never a good feeling no matter who is saying it.
However, ten years later, I was in New York City, sitting in the great big imposing office of the manager who managed Art Garfunkel. And that manager was considering taking me on as one of his clients because a VP at Columbia Records (now SONY) thought I was a really talented singer-songwriter. I was nervous as fucking hell and shaking inside, but I was there. And from there, the VP at Columbia Records also sent me to an entertainment attorney's office on Park Avenue, where I sat next to the legendary Italian movie director, Roberto Rosselini, while we both waited to see our respective lawyers. Things went awry for me, as they always did in those days when it involved my music career, however listening to this record again today, after so many years of not hearing it, instantly brought back all that poignancy. Jay was saying last night on the phone that life isn't about something as black & white as success or failure; it's about success or "a chance to learn something valuable" (or however he phrased it). I laughed really hard at that and replied that I was learning, and learning, and learning! Crimony!
But it's true. I gave up on the music b/c I could not connect with myself any longer as a singer-songwriter; I wanted to just write erotic fiction and that worked out quite well for me. The muse blesssed me enormously in that realm. But I hear these Art Garfunkel songs now and realize finally down in my bones that I didn't "fail" at the music. What I did was survive 2 rapes, 2 suicide attempts, a nervous breakdown, drug & alcohol abuse problems, a mental hospital, and then 14 years of "trying to make it as a singer-songwriter" alone in New York City. (And I achieved a lot of cool stuff in the process, but it turned out to not be what I wanted as a career.) (And I found my biological father back in those years, too, which I consider my greatest achievement of all b/c the odds of me ever finding him were next to nil and, I don't know, my winning a Grammy probably had better odds.)
Anyway, there is so much to feel good about, not the least of which is that I'm still here, telling the story. Have a great Thanksgiving, gang, wherever you are. And if you are in some sort of prison of awfulness, whatever that entails, know that time passes and it all gets different eventually. And if you can hang in there long enough, the stories you're going to tell are going to be somehow so fucking worth it.
However, it is still just Thanksgiving and somewhere yesterday, bobbing up in the insanity that I lovingly refer to as "my brain," I remembered that I was being counted upon by my family to make the cranberry sauce and hadn't even gone to the store yet and bought the cranberries. So, yes, I went to the grocery store late Wednesday afternoon -- that final food shopping frenzy, day-before-Thanksgiving madness was well underway.
I had come from the club where I'd done a couple miles on the treadmill and 20 minutes of rowing and no shower, so my hair really looked awesome at the grocery store, as you can no doubt imagine. [See some sort of post below about how incredibly vain she is about her hair! -- Ed.] But I had a really great time. I am capable of having a really great time at the grocery store since, being the lofty writer/artist I've been for so many decades, there have been plenty of times (even this year) when I haven't had enough money to go grocery shopping. If I can afford bread, lettuce, peanut butter, bananas, a cheap bottle of red wine and food for the cats, I "grin & bear it" as they say, and consider myself blessed.
But this past week, a delightful royalty check arrived in my mailbox and, after I paid my WHOPPING cell phone bill from my week in Paris, and paid whatever I could on my credit card from my week in Paris, I had plenty of cash leftover to do what I love best: go to the grocery store and put whatever it is I want into the cart, knowing that I can pay for it -- thanks to the many, many nameless, faceless people all over the world who, for whatever wonderful reason, feel compelled to buy my books.
When I got home, I started the cranberry sauce right away and the smell of it boiling on the stove (cloves, oranges), in a nanosecond, brought Christmas into the air. I was so joyful. Me, the cats, the birds, the squirrels, the rabbit, the groundhog, the raccoons & skunks around the backyard -- all of us had plenty to eat for now and Jay is eventually going to get here from Denver and stay here, and it felt like it was going to be a really great Christmas. So I did 4 loads of laundry and started putting up Christmas stuff.
I also downloaded Sting's new Christmas CD, If On A Winter's Night. It's one of those haunting sort of Madrigal-type collections of old English songs. But it immediately brought to mind one of my all-time favorite albums from my remarkably bleak adolescence, Angel Clare by Art Garfunkel, so I immediately downloaded that, as well. And I have to say, gang, it has held up well; it is still an incredibly gorgeous album. It truly is. If you are unfamiliar with it, you should check it out. If you recall it dimly from the glorious days of your bygone youth, you should reacquaint yourself with it posthaste. It is just so freakin' beautiful. And I don't think it's just because it brings to mind a period of my life that I did not think I would survive, and so it has a cerain personal poignancy for me. It actually is really just a beautiful album.
When I was 15 and in the mental hospital, I used to play several of the songs from the album on my guitar. "Down in the Willow Garden," "Mary was an Only Child," "Barbara Allen," -- to name a few. These are very sad songs and it upset my social worker that I would sing these songs (I was in that place b/c among other things, I had attempted suicide and the sorrow implicit in these particular songs compounds sorrow on top of sorrow). But anyway, I thought the social worker (and everyone else who worked there) came from some other planet that I couldn't figure out how to get to, so I just ignored her. I recall vividly, though, one of the staff members in that place asking me what I wanted to be "when I grew up" and, when I replied that I wanted to go to New York and be a singer-songwriter, he told me straight out to get realistic and give it up. Of course I used to hear this all the time from my family, so I was used to hearing it, but it is never a good feeling no matter who is saying it.
However, ten years later, I was in New York City, sitting in the great big imposing office of the manager who managed Art Garfunkel. And that manager was considering taking me on as one of his clients because a VP at Columbia Records (now SONY) thought I was a really talented singer-songwriter. I was nervous as fucking hell and shaking inside, but I was there. And from there, the VP at Columbia Records also sent me to an entertainment attorney's office on Park Avenue, where I sat next to the legendary Italian movie director, Roberto Rosselini, while we both waited to see our respective lawyers. Things went awry for me, as they always did in those days when it involved my music career, however listening to this record again today, after so many years of not hearing it, instantly brought back all that poignancy. Jay was saying last night on the phone that life isn't about something as black & white as success or failure; it's about success or "a chance to learn something valuable" (or however he phrased it). I laughed really hard at that and replied that I was learning, and learning, and learning! Crimony!
But it's true. I gave up on the music b/c I could not connect with myself any longer as a singer-songwriter; I wanted to just write erotic fiction and that worked out quite well for me. The muse blesssed me enormously in that realm. But I hear these Art Garfunkel songs now and realize finally down in my bones that I didn't "fail" at the music. What I did was survive 2 rapes, 2 suicide attempts, a nervous breakdown, drug & alcohol abuse problems, a mental hospital, and then 14 years of "trying to make it as a singer-songwriter" alone in New York City. (And I achieved a lot of cool stuff in the process, but it turned out to not be what I wanted as a career.) (And I found my biological father back in those years, too, which I consider my greatest achievement of all b/c the odds of me ever finding him were next to nil and, I don't know, my winning a Grammy probably had better odds.)
Anyway, there is so much to feel good about, not the least of which is that I'm still here, telling the story. Have a great Thanksgiving, gang, wherever you are. And if you are in some sort of prison of awfulness, whatever that entails, know that time passes and it all gets different eventually. And if you can hang in there long enough, the stories you're going to tell are going to be somehow so fucking worth it.
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