Oh, this weekend, by the way? Was the worst. I mean, it was the best, because I had so much fun with Ron Currie and his pal Gary, both visiting from Maine, two big, burly, hard-drinking, brilliant men who I introduced as my bodyguards throughout the night. And I got to see Hallelujah the Hills on Friday! Also I got to see a crush of fun writer people on Saturday night at a dinner for Ron at Dumont. And then on Sunday so many wonderful people came into the bookstore I sort of lost count, including Dave Daley, who was in town from Louisville for his 40th birthday indie rock weekend. Also Tobias and Liberty made me CDs to play at the bookstore, which was awesome. There are a lot of good people floating around out there in the universe. And I’m pretty grateful to know them.
But also? This extremely angering thing happened on Friday night and then flared again on Saturday, and finally I contended with it. Which means: uh-oh. I don’t like it when I get angry, but man, was I ever. Actually I was angry about things that had happened in the past, and this was the final straw. For a few months now I had been working really hard to deal with it in a peaceful way and just drop it and move on, but sometimes that’s bullshit, and there’s only so much positive thinking, and there’s only so much scribbling in your journal, and there’s only so much yoga, and you just need to Be Angry already.
I suppose this was possibly some sort of test that I failed, but let me tell you: I failed beautifully. I give myself an A+ for failure. A+++++. I told the story twice out loud yesterday and both people I told it to laughed at how awful it was, and I was not even trying to tell it for comic effect. Because obviously it is not funny even though it is fucking hilarious.
Calm down, I’ll tell you what happened sometime. Just not today.
And then around 1 AM last night, sleepless as I have been lately, I finally figured out what I wanted to do for my paperback launch in January, and how I could make the event interesting and fun and collaborative, that last part being the most important and exciting because I have no interest in doing any events that are all about me anymore because I am boring and enough of me already and who cares anyway? And then suddenly, with this fixed point in the distance to focus on, I felt immediately better about my life.
It is always the work that saves me and sometimes I wish this was not the case, because the work can be exhausting. Saying, “The work saves me,” is the same as saying, “I save me.” And sometimes I don’t know how to save me. What do I know? I know the same as you. What do you know? The same as everyone else. Work, write, think, pray, and it’s still not enough. You get to the end of the sentence, and there’s always another one left to write.
