Drops of Blood

“Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

I have been familiar with this quote for years, but only recently bothered to find out its source.  It's from Gene Fowler, a journalist who died in 1960.  I had never heard of him before I went to identify his quote. But I think I'm a fan.  He's also credited with having said “Sometimes I think [my writing] sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.”

Writing as a full-time job is still pretty new to me.  And I am still not quite used to the hopalong, drag-and-shuffle rhythm of it.  For twenty years I've been in one high-energy, high-productivity job after another:  veterinary tech work; managing the equipment, supplies and logistics of an art camp; doing PR and logistical support for a science camp; functioning as a one-woman PR and marketing office.  Now I'm forced to slow the pace, focus on one thing at a time, and focus my attention to a laser beam to get things done with as much precision as possible.  No longer is quantity the same thing as quality.  No longer does efficiency always trump perfection. Sometimes, yes.  But not always.

It's a strange transition for me. For one thing, I'm accustomed to working fast--too fast in some instances. When it comes to editing, faster is not necessarily better. I'm having to train myself to slow down, think things through carefully, and cross check. Is Havarti cheese really capitalized? Are compound adjectives hyphenated only when they come before the noun they modify.  Does a comma or an em-dash work better here?  It's the kind of close reading and dogged consistency my busy, efficient little soul wants not to be bothered with.  But it's my job!

And then there's the uncertain nature of the workload. I write, then I send my work out for review and comments, and I wait. Sometimes I'm peppered with a thousand minor things to edit in a day: I'm the queen of the 50-word blurb: a brief bio, a program description, text for lobby signs, emails to members announcing an event. It can feel really trivial until I get something that has some horrifying error in it and realize that it would absolutely have gone public that way if I wasn't there to catch it. (Like the time I was handed program text that referred to Harriet Beecher Stowe as an "African American author.") Sometimes I have larger projects to organize, edit or re-work.  Sometimes I'm just becalmed in the space between.  Now, despite what the state of my housekeeping might lead you to believe, I'm not actually all that comfortable doing nothing. It makes me feel jittery... guilty... and anxious, as if there surely must be something terribly important that I'm overlooking or have completely forgotten.

On the other hand, I enjoy the writing and editing, and I'm learning more about my subject every day. I surprise myself sometimes by actually recognizing certain styles and schools of art, and I'm gradually learning the names of the artists of the most popular works, though certainly not of every work. One of the things that befuddled me most when I first arrived at Crystal Bridges was the maddening habit everyone has of referring to the works by the last name of the artist, not by the title of the work. When I think about it, that comes in handy when dealing with contemporary works which, seven times out of ten, are titled "Untitled."  But I didn't know Shinn from Shinola at first.

It's helped a lot, believe it or not, to start giving tours. For one thing, it gets me back out in the galleries to mingle with the public and the art I'm supposed to be representing. For another, it has made me internalize some of the things about the artwork that I've heard and read in a way that sort of makes me feel as if I actually know what I'm talking about. I don't.  Not really.  But I feel as if I do.

In which Big News arrives with surprisingly little Bang

Last weekend shortly after dropping Grex off with his dad, I received an email from said dad, informing me that dad's girlfriend is pregnant, and they would be notifying our son of his impending sibling over the weekend.  They will also be moving into a new house together this summer.

That's a lot for anyone to process.  Especially if that anyone is just eleven. Nevertheless, I assured the X that I thought G would handle the news well, and would no doubt be excited to be a big brother, long after he surely thought all hope was lost.  And true to form, Grayson was indeed delighted at the prospect of having a little brother or sister, and took all the upcoming changes in stride, as he always does.

I won't say I didn't have my moments of introspection over the news. Having lost a baby some five years ago, and getting very near the age when all possibility of child-bearing will be gone, there's a certain regret for me that someone else will be providing G with all the joy and excitement of a new sibling. He will have a whole new family, with relationships that I share no part of. Nevertheless, despite those brief feelings of regret, I was surprised to discover that what would have been deeply unsettling news to me six weeks ago is now downgraded to a brief blip on my emotional radar.

That has everything to do with John.  Meeting him has opened up doors and windows in my heart. And I find that, astonishingly, I have an entirely new outlook on life: one that is able to look forward with hope and backward without bitterness. Grim emotional baggage I've carried doggedly for years seems to have melted away, as well. What miracle is this?

I spent a lot of time after my divorce being deeply resentful of the fact that the X seemed able to simply jettison our marriage, snip away those pesky ten years, and start fresh. At 36, he could pretty easily re-enter the single life. And with no full-time child to care for, that life was his own to do with what he wished.  At 42, it just wasn't the same for me. I doubt many women feel all that comfortable getting back out on the dating market after 40. God knows I wasn't getting any younger or better looking. When he took up with a woman 13 years my junior last summer, I found myself dealing with a whole new round of bitterness that he was starting a brand new life, while mine still seemed damaged and lame:  stagnant at best or, at worse, spiraling toward some inevitable solitary denouement as a Crazy Dog Lady. I dreaded the day when he would start a new family, something that was almost certainly no longer an option for me, even if I found someone to start over with at 44.

But the Universe stepped in, and John appeared.  It was like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when the scene changes from grim black and white to glorious, saturated Technicolor. I was ushered into a world I had given up believing in:  a world where there's love and companionship, trust, laughter and truth.  A world with a future.  This small change in perception has made it possible for me to let go of  much of the bitterness of the past three years. I also find that I now have it in my heart to forgive my ex, at least in part. If I'm not quite able to forgive the hurts of our past, I can at least forgive him for his future, and turn to embrace my own. I may not know exactly what that future will be, but I have a sense of hope and excitement that I haven't felt for many years.

No, I'm not likely to have another baby:  to rewind my life and have Overs in the family department. But that's not really what I want.  I have my son. I have enjoyed watching him grow through the various stages of childhood to the ripe old age of eleven. But I'm not particularly interested in going backward. All the adventure--the next Great Frontier--lies ahead. And with complete amazement and gratitude, I have found a companion for the journey.

I can't wait to see what it has in store.

CRUNCH.

So, I've had my car for about seven years now and never had an accident. Never even bumped into anything.  And now I've gone and done it twice in 24 hours.

The first time was Monday night. I was pulling out of a parking space at John's. I turned too sharply as I was backing out and crunched my right front bumper into the side of his sister's van.  It made a really horrible noise * CRRRrrRRUnCCCH * and I looked up to discover that I'd transferred a good part of the paint from my bumper onto the door guard along the side of her van.

oops.

I was, naturally, horrified, despite John's assurances that it was no big deal and the damage inflicted was nothing compared to the damage still extant on the opposite side of the van where a deer had jumped into it. (you should see the deer...)   Still... this is not the sort of impression I wanted to make.

John took a sort of wicked glee in reporting the incident to his sister and pointing out that I was in no way intoxicated at the time:  a fact that, I'm afraid, doesn't make my driving look any better. I should at least have the mitigating excuse of being a couple of sheets into the wind if I'm going to run into people's cars. He also took a certain evil pleasure in tricking me the next morning into believing that Rian was "really really mad" at me for the accident.  She wasn't, by the way, because she's  sweetheart, but I bought her a bottle of wine in apology anyway, and attached a poem composed for the occasion:

Roses are red
You work in a bar
I'm sorry I crunched
Your car with my car



Now that I think about it,  the whole incident was partly John's fault.  He was capering about in the parking lot, distracting me.  Surely he should take some of the blame.

So...  yesterday I scraped the opposite bumper on a concrete footing at the gas station:  you know, the kind of thing they put up to keep you from ramming your car into the gas pumps.  My poor car, on which I still owe just under $1,000, has now suffered two indignities at my hands, and bears scars that make me look like I drive into things all the time.

Which I don't!  Honestly!