Thank you for your article Ylan, for it represents the predicament in which Linda C. Dezenski left me twelve years ago, and now my lung issues leave me too much further impaired to undo the damage; more than likely I am now going to decline worse than any animal mortally injured in its habitat, which leaves me empty handed but for this age old question about the human condition.
I cannot apply for a hardship exception anymore, and that is my fault for being honest with the lawyer assigned to me during my bankruptcy hearing. I told the lawyer about my mother's death leaving an uexpected windfall from insurance, and the lawyer was not happy with me, as a practical matter. She and I could have applied for hardship, and I probably would have won, but I told her about my mum. I did not want to be prosecuted by the state for fraud had I not spoken, but you know, I begin to feel as if I might have succeeded in life with a criminal record, and I am starting to giggle on the verge of insanity, to steal a direct phrase from Henry James.
My conditions are bad, but not as dire as when my mother died, and before you ask, I wound up having to use most of those funds for medical bills, and to pay Tim for not having the time to take care of me very well. I'd like to stop using him altogether, but professional cleaning services would cost more, and inflame my bronchial issues just the same. Would you like a dark anecdote? Do you have a choice?
My colon erupted, little more than a half hour behind this paragraph; it felt like a decent half gallon of paste, with all the phlegm I have been producing, and that eruption would have been an accident, but I had a chuck liner stuck to my thigh, and that caught the opening discharge, like a loose diaper, spared the worst. I got lucky, in a sense, but I will never get better, and so Chris Beasley bans my account @ the literature network because I tried to approach him on the fact that I was ill, but could he pay me for the work he accepted, and this discussion constituted an attack.
You know what I think it constitutes? Spastic_dowager absorbs a great deal of punishment, whatever else I am guilty of. Posting frequency does effect concentration, and I tried to limit my usage before I crossed swords with the big kahuna, not become too invested, but did anyway, but how far we go with banning online accounts makes me wonder. I did not threaten to sue Mr. Beasley, though I will soon file a discrimination claim against him, because some of those virtual connections mattered to me. I never harassed or attacked any poster, nor emailed them to talk, though I did make a few research requests from young and healthier instructors, and I never consciously attempted to violate their rules, nor given an *infraction*. I know about this from live meeting three members, and in short I'm tired of being punished like this.
I have refrained from discussing my banishment from The Literature Network with the same impetus that I have discussed my banishment from the P$W Speakeasy, partly due to the fact that my sins in the former community were negligible in comparison to the latter, and the site owner remains, still, an infantile jackass, but losing the connection of virtual familiarity still bites. I have little desire to return to the latter site, and this took me ten years of grinding away at a guilt I allowed to balloon, seeing myself in a fearful and degenerative aspect, which more or less is concomitant on mental illness as a matter of degree, to parse more finely, a mood disorder. To tirelessly reiterate the point, however, what I wanted from the MFA guild was a path to freedom that did not involve teaching, and it is now in twilight. As to the former forum, so called, it bores the shit out of me, minus the handful of useful contacts; those contacts, however, are apparently not my friends, since none of them use my comment section, and they know spastic is also the avatar Jozanny, hence my cynicism about connection and alienation through device, despite the fact that the stability of my lung function is coming to an end. I have probably purchased my last supply of Aeros, and may need more aggressive breathing therapy very soon, and even though I may not have fully connected the dots to any satisfaction of the online legal community, my former supervisor, her employer, and my landlord, have, through their negligence, destroyed my health. Had Liberty kept its promises, I would not today be so weakened, and sick, and levels of loss have their priorities.
However, I reconnected with Virgil (Manny) by the virtue of a spammer who had gotten hold of his yahoo address, and will confess that I have relented in relation to our former friction, which can be blamed on Italian provincial rivalry between NYC and Philly neighborhoods, she smiles while dying. If you hurry and look at the site, you'll notice Orphan Pip is still an active regular, and thus will be footnoted. The moderator Scheherazade, intones, "We take bans very seriously, and will not talk about them."
This, as well, is an utter form of hypocrisy. I committed no crime; my lungs were in bad shape and the site owner kicked me off because I attempted to discuss the chapter summary payment for what I had completed. Our capacity for pretension knows no end, and is in fact, limitless, and no one there cares about compassion for a homebound invalid.
As Manny is of my blood, I forgive his citations of the godspel of John to comfort me, and bear him the affection of our fellowship, remain pleased that he came to meet me and that we exchanged gifts and kisses, and that he and his wife are happy with their young son, and that I can bless their fortunes from afar, and the personal convictions he and I share are no longer so different, though Manny has been a good Catholic, and spastic has not, and can never recommit to the faith, as such, because I cannot vacillate, like Anne Rice, between extremes. I may have mentioned I sent her POB a letter once. Pointless exercise.
Had I succeeded with the freelance proposal I submitted on this day, I would have been 250 dollars richer, just as, had Beasley kept his word, I would have had an additional 55 towards housekeeping. Adds up. The amounts involved would have been long gone since, but any amount is better than zero. I have slowed down, due to transitioning between accounts, and other activities you have read about above, but I also have to get better, honing trade market to idea, so I have retracted slightly into the old paradigm under which most writers get no money at all, and that is, leaning on my own hardcopy development.
I am going to let you in on a small secret that will make me even more popular with literary and independent magazine editors. Yessssss, reading recent issues matters, but not really, not for the classifieds from my former MFA syndicate. You learn after a while it is like a lottery. Get creative enough with your imagery and some editor somewhere will offer you a blow job or tit nibble. It may not be the high end, like Paris Review, or my near obsession, a before death correspondent byline in Atlantic Monthly, and note, I did not say fiction, or poetry, but an article, but anything you scribble, someone will give you space for it without pay.
Now, real freelancing, the hard stuff, the trades, policy wonks, medical, health-- that, my children, is where sources and study actually matters, and it still is not easy to do. Off contract, I hit pay dirt three or four times. Creative writing is useless, and no one will tell you that, because terminal degree holders need a job. Writing to earn a living is not the same as a novelist who gets lucky and then has a marketable franchise. It was not easy before digital and Amazon squeezed the purse, and it is worse now.
Able bodied writers do get day jobs of course, but you know I am a quadriplegic, and my special transit access curbed, along with the usual violins. Listen to your teachers, if not me, and vice versa. Go to law school, become a CPA, have a fallback. This is a brutal game. What was my idea? Hearing loss, and I fumbled. Next bullseye.
