If I did not stop doing this I was going to die.--Cheryl Strayed
On the whole, I was predisposed towards prejudicial distain of Salvation, simply by virtue of dealing with fifty years of the asteroid meme in the industry, and I could have made myself sleep, as CBS re-aired the pilot Friday evening. It had a few libertarian brush strokes, but the fact that Dell flat screen computer monitors and Apple phones have become supporting players in television science fiction doesn't translate well, as far as I am concerned, which is why I might have paid more attention to The Mindy Project; its twitter account followed me a long time ago. I haven't written about it because I am ambivalent about the humor in The Office, but at least these situation comedy offshoots from British models still focus on character. In an alternate world where I had mobility on my feet, as you do, I might have been Mindy as heroine, playfully acerbic as opposed to caustic, in the varying degrees of hostility humans have, mocking their own behavior.
I need to be cautious in reconciling with the maternal voice of my sex. Children need to be reared, but in the developed world, we've lost perspective on the matter. Reconciling with Gretchen, and getting too familiar with Robert's liberalism, reminds me why I've gotten banned from the collective social voice, and I cannot wade back in like a holistic penitent. It isn't that I want to hurt them, or be disparaging. I know Robert hopes I find my way to peace, acceptance, some sort of happy extraction, and Gretchen probably forgave me because she knew she wasn't the target of my antagonism, but sometimes, the second sex, with its pasteurized, urbane husbands, is insufferable, and my Speakeasy past, not wholly absent in social media, recollects my unease with clacking hens. I've kept Cheryl Strayed on twitter, but the memory of her authorial voice about her journey into horse and needle tracks had a vaporous quality to it, a sort of conspiratorial nod that her lack of control with narcotics wasn't serious. I forget why she and I connected nearly twenty years ago, and as I've written before, that she ignored my greeting on twitter doesn't rankle that badly. It might be simply that she doesn't remember we used to post to each other. We would not have become, or remained friends, however. There is another whom I haven't mentioned. Diane Kirsten Martin, Robert's workshop colleague. She and I sparred over my bias toward Africans on Facebook. I did not get banned for being civilly frank, thought I might, frankly didn't care, and we've ignored each other since, but this still reflects the lassitude of Robert's nature. Diane is catty, I'm the brass bitch, and Cheryl, his wife, smiles mischievously. None of this is my world, this San Francisco Episcopalian middle brow curvature, and it never shall be. But if I reject it, then what exactly was I aspiring to, defeated as I am by urban progressive corruption?
I only logged on an hour ago to look up the dates on gen x, and I fit either as a young boomer, like my aunt, who is ten years my senior, or a gen elder. It is stupendous to consider that I'm both. When I crossed the 300 follower mark on social media I knew it would drop, given I tread dangerous waters.
I don't care. That is one primary difference between Cheryl and I, the successful memoirist who interacted with me 13 years ago as a P&W subscriber, our only bridge to each other being her heroin needle. She pulled herself back with a mercurial irreverence in her authorial voice which has earned the woman her middle brow redemption, and I am genuinely happy for her recognition, but meant what I tweeted to her about posing for a photograph with Oprah.
Never, never and a day could I ever be so conventional for the sake of sales. My notoriety, if it comes, is up through the dark side. But the true tragedy of this country: Cheryl Strayed can milk recovering addiction. I snort nothing, probably will never recover substantial gainful activity, and my minority building manager humiliates me with impunity, and any whites coming to my defense would face the culturally ingrained African deceit. Trudy Richardson has 50 variations on her rationalization for attacking me. There is no door number three with the real reason: I signed my own death warrant with this rental corporation when I was all of 23.
I never realized.
When I reviewed, or interpreted The Others earlier this year, I was unaware that Nicole Kidman had followed through on her psychological thriller arc with the equally creepy but possibly more uneven Birth (2004). Though I missed few, the minutes that escaped me were still crucial, and I'd like to screen it once more, but Cameron Bright was used to much better effect here than he was in the stupendous and confusing Ultraviolet, another film that has drawn my mention during my unfortunate LiveJournal stint. Endless revision, tying in the old posts and the new, for what exactly when I cannot solve my application problems, but this will wait until after the holiday, as the dynamic between the new little lady and my poor Vincent has exhausted me, and I am close to giving up the love of feline parenting, though it will break my heart, already rife with fragments. I will not be celebrating tomorrow; indefinite at this point, but I may try a weekend holiday ride to Penn's Landing. In all my years at this location I have never taken the 21 bus to the pier. For me, during the active years of my field work, it was always in the opposite direction, to Darby, smaller maybe, but to my memory the Darby borough is just as bad as the city. Drugs more concentrated, and I have more graphic memories of my mother's drug use, the purple bruises in the fleshy crook of her elbow, the rubber tubing I wasn't supposed to see. What was it that I said about reticence? But the irony of Doty's continued lunging over my review is that particular review was of no consequence as compared to what I write here for the sake of testament, alienating my family, and those who knew me. I think Doty has a lot to learn about what can be controlled in public domains, and what cannot; in contrast to his desire to be loved by his readers, I do not care about my audience in that way, so much as the integrity of my work itself, and if people are dismayed by what I produce, I do not go on a boner about it. I have been praised for the power of my poetry, for how hard hitting I am, or impressed poor Louise, who I abandoned through no fault of her own. She is a perfectly nice young woman who found my work *very raw,* and we should have left it as that. I have been criticized as pretentious, but unlike Doty, I did not harangue the now inactive Usenet poster who threw out that red meat. I like the complexity of my imagery, though it leads to the flaw of a certain top heaviness that can topple my poetic construct. I have been rejected as many thousands of times as the paltry dollars I have drawn in on my work. I have been accepted for publication in sometimes unexpected ways, and I have not been as successful with marketing paradigms as some, including those whom I actually respect, like Cheryl, (not liking the Oprah juggernaut and my expressed frustration at comparative trajectory is not the same thing as disdain; Cheryl is authentic--Doty is a crock, a load on) but there are reasons for this beyond talent, very much related to my vulnerability, strained resources.
I wonder if these agrarian Pentecostals realize that the authors of Semitic scripture were prone to rhetorical exaggeration that is common to all polemical writing of persuasion, and that it does not mean that the human body can withstand lethal doses of venom. Lauren Pond's ethical dilemma is both relevant and a pedestrian false dichotomy. You either do your job as a journalist or you interfere; agonizing about her decision in public is not an expiatory exercise. Same analogy with me and my cat. I killed the animal in the long term by indulging him and in the short term by hesitating, and I have to live with this, even if my bond with Joey was unique. Forgiving myself, not forgiving myself, rationalizing my stress and expense over the last six years, none of this will make any difference. This Pastor is dead and was an idiot, which makes me wonder if religious fanaticism is slowly falling victim to evolutionary necessity, being eliminated out of the gene pool.
My aunt may actually be right, and that, due to age, my sinus pressure is causing my vertigo, which has mitigated slightly; fear of locked in syndrome nearly sent me to the emergency room, but I slept off the anxiety. Bulletproof Heart (1995), with Anthony LaPaglia, is an interesting bit of poseur in its own right, whether or not this reviewer is being fair to Mimi Rogers as the traditional noir femme fatale. I cannot make up my mind from one viewing that did not have my undivided attention, writing this, microwaving a single serve pizza, taking care of little Vinne; his brother's ashes are in. I have to pick them up, and missed what the psychiatric fruit gave LaPaglia's character as a diagnosis to explain Fiona's S&M games, but it is some form of catatonia, sporatic and intermittent.
I cannot really say I know Cheryl Strayed, but she and I used to interact in the Poets&Writers Speakeasy, and there she is on Amazon with Oprah, who looks matriarchal and awful in that photo, and I am still here, in exactly the same place. Rocking the boat may not get me out of it either. I wonder if those on twitter who have attacked me would read Cheryl's work and judge us both accordingly. For all the physical and emotional punishment I have absorbed, I never turned to substance abuse, but there we have it, another average American blonde whose internal struggle is good marketing for a black beauty queen's media.
