The Way Some People Die

. . . is the title of a book by Ross MacDonald. I'm reading a collection of short autobiographical pieces by MacDonald (real name Kenneth Millar). Millar describes emotional and practical difficulties at various stages of his life, "seismic upheavals" such that I think anyone could appreciate or identify with. The real difference is that Millar never seems to have suffered from a creative block.

He could always write it out within his fiction. That's what I had learned to do as well. But it's not there anymore.

These days off, or at least the unoccupied hours, are deadly to me. Not being able to write is like not having a mouth. Beating myself up over it doesn't help at all.

If I were to hire MacDonald's detective, Lew Archer, to help me solve the case, he would find several causes (as I have done), but perhaps he could find solutions that are evading me.

First, and possibly foremost, I used to drink while I wrote. Not "get drunk," mind you -- if that happened, the work came to a screeching halt. But a drink or two or three, taken over a few hours, would lubricate the gears, get them turning again, unlock my imagination and free my hands from restraints.

I don't have that tool anymore. My gears are frozen and rusted badly in place, and my imagination seems to be bolted shut, barring only the random images of horror that sometimes burst out when I'm trying to lie at rest.

The other thing I've come up with is the feeling that, with all my grandparents gone and now my mother gone, too, there's nobody left that I need to prove myself to. My friend BC would likely say to this, "Prove it to yourself!"

Myself. That's the person I least care for. The only person I hate more is my sister, who helped make me this way.

I honestly believed that a few days off, some down time to gather myself, would be all that I needed to get going again. Instead, it's having the opposite effect. It's almost as if the outrageous craziness of the last nine months kept me from experiencing a level of the grief and despair (which hardly seems possible), and now that things have calmed down a lot, the silence and the vacancy has allowed a fresh tsunami of emotion to hit me. Not being able to work at any creative pursuit (not even my scrapbook of the old house, which is filled with associations that I can't bear to reflect upon anymore) -- and beating myself up about it -- is having real emotional consequences for me. It means that I have no outlet.

Blogging about it all seems to be the only thing I can manage. But it makes me feel that I should change the title of this blog to "The Broken Record."

*

I came to the Millar book yesterday when Annie Proulx's Bird Cloud fell through for me. Proulx is an alum of the college that employs me, making Bird Cloud the no-brainer choice for Book of the Month when it comes out in paperback this October. So, I thought for once it would be nice to have actually read the book of the month.


The book is a memoir of Proulx's experiences building her Dream House in what used to be a protected reserve, which is now privately owned by her. Right away it got off to a rocky start for me with a long stretch of present-tense writing. As a young man, the present tense never bothered me much, and I even used it myself on occasion when immediacy seemed an important element of my story. But now that I'm a crotchety Olde Farte, present tense just really deeply annoys me, especially when the writer seems to be using it for no good reason. That was the case here.


Then Proulx launches into a far-ranging history of her family, and although there were small points of interest I largely didn't give a damn. Something is wrong in the "Reading and Dozing" process when the dozing starts to take up much more time than the reading. Proulx was still in the middle of this preliminary ancestral ramble when the chapter abruptly ended. I realized that I'd plowed through the whole first chapter, and Proulx had yet to begin the story that I showed up to read.


Fortunately, it was an advance reader's copy (the home shelves of most booksellers are full of these, I imagine), so I had no money in it and could take it back to the store. It went straight into my bag. Life is too short for books that can't come to the point.

*

On Friday afternoon I drove all the way out to South China in my Highly Illegal car. My lawyer had said that she wanted to see me. I was then as I am today keeping the fact of being emotionally overwrought just under the surface. It turned out that she wanted to make a distribution from my mother's estate.

As a result of this meeting, my father and his wife are now completely paid off in what they loaned me to buy this house, and this house is now 1/3rd mine, free and clear. I was given an additional amount. I won't type the number, but it's enough for me to pay off all my credit card debt and buy a car outright, without having to go into additional debt. This amount still leaves a considerably larger amount left in the estate, that will come to me later.

So -- things should be looking up, right? I should be feeling better about life.

I am not. It's actually deeply upsetting to me. Tears are running down my face as I type this. I cannot escape the fact that in order for all of this good to come about, Mom had to die. I'd give it all back, and more, to have never had that happen.

-- Freder.

The Secret Life of Grover

Until well into my adulthood I could do a pretty mean impersonation of Grover and Cookie Monster. So good that in High School, I had friends who would call me up so that I could do Grover over the telephone to their young siblings. I still own the record pictured above, and don't need to play it 'cuz I know it by heart.

I am blooo-oooo-oooo!

Oh so blooo-oooo-oooo!

I am Blue because I don't know enough about yoooo-ooo-oooo!

*Sigh* Frank Oz was a hero of mine before he started directing movies.

I still own all of my Muppet hand puppets. Some of them are better than others. The Cookie Monster is too small, as is the Kermit, but Miss Piggy is pretty good and Animal, Rowlf the Dog and Grover are absolutely great. The day I got my Grover puppet he hugged me and I felt complete.

At Christmastime I tied a big patch of cotton under his chin and swiped a Santa hat off of one of my mother's dolls, and when my mother walked in the door Santa Grover went "Ho Ho Ho!" at her and she completely lost it. That year Santa Grover had to hand out the Christmas presents.

It got so that I spoke as Grover an awful lot. This is because I knew what Grover would say in any given situation, but I certainly didn't know what I would say in most every situation.

Asperger's. We do the darndest things.

I can't tell you exactly how long this went on. But one day I just stopped and it's been so long that I'm not sure I could do the voice if my life depended on it. Grover just left me one day, never to return. 

-- Freder.

Smiling Faces

Yesterday, my boss spent some time straightening some books rather flamboyantly within eyeshot of my computer screen.

Hint: She wasn't straightening books. Fact is, she was trying to catch me in the act of "goofing off."

Fact is, I was on the straight up-and-up at that moment, and felt rather triumphant that she was trying to catch me at something that I wasn't doing.

Fact also is -- I never leave my station, except to work in other parts of the store. Fact also is, I eat my lunch while I'm working. Fact also is, I'm entitled to an hour for lunch, and two fifteen minute breaks that I don't take.

So if I want to Fuck Off and type some shit on my blog or Facebook for five or fifteen minutes, that's my right and she can kiss my ass.

The other day she saw me slumped in my chair, gazing in a penetrating fashion at my computer screen, and she accused me of "reading."

Reading what? I don't read books on a computer screen. Fact is, I was perusing the forthcoming books on Above the Treeline, which is not only a part of my job, but a part of my job that she insisted on my signing on to.

All this "policing" . . . all this "trying to catch me in the act" . . . in the act of what? In the act of exercising my rights? There are several bookstore employees who disappear for an hour every day -- as is their right. I don't. I take my time in other ways.

I'm not saying that I have the worst boss in the world, 'cuz I don't. But, for fuck's sake, don't try to make me feel like a criminal because I take my time in unconventional ways.

I'm just saying: GRR!

-- Freder.

I Wish. . .

I have never lived this close to neighbors before. For the past thirty-five years my nearest neighbor was nearly a half-mile away (and sometimes even they managed to annoy me!). So it's particularly ranklesome that of all the neighbors I could get, the nearest one is, by trade, a builder.

Apparently "being a builder" means that if you don't have any jobs to go to, you keep yourself and your man busy by performing Random Acts of Violence on your own house, otherwise known as "projects," projects such as "Strip the (Perfectly Good) Siding Off the Back of Your House and then Have Your Man Pound on Something Metal at Eight o' Clock in the Bloody Morning."

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Pause.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Pause.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Repeat as necessary until you've deprived your neighbor of a solid hour's sleep, and driven him to distraction once he's awake.

Another interesting project that unemployed builders do with their time off is, "Drive Around Your House on a Mini-Tractor Without a Shirt On, Sweating Like a Pig All Over Your Ugly Fat Belly."

I shall have to come up with an Interesting Project or two of my own. Right now, the front runner under consideration is, "Build a Molotov Cocktail and Heave it Through Your Neighbor's Window."

-- Freder.

I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK --

Today has seen yet more gloomy and dismal skies, and I guess everyone knows what that does to me by now. I won't go on about it. Other than to say that it's too chilly to run the fans and too moist and humid not to. Today I was going to attempt work on a ghastly short story that I started, oh, a couple of years ago now, but so far have not felt up to it. Just now I discovered that I hadn't even moved it onto this computer.

Yesterday was also humid, but sunny and hot. So for me, it would have been better to have swapped the planned activities around. Yesterday I played lumberjack.

I'm normally against cutting anything back, I am a pro-growth sort of person. I like it when foliage takes over the property a bit. But the tree growing beside my house -- I don't know what flavor of tree it is, but I like to think of it as my monkey-puzzle tree for the ways that its branches have writhed so confusingly amongst each other, even though I just looked at pictures of a real monkey-puzzle tree on the interwebs and mine looks nothing like it -- was causing problems. It's branches were pressing on the side of the house and actually laying on the roof, which made it impossible to rake snow off in the winter, which caused an ice dam to form (damn) which caused a nasty leak inside my porch where all my unread books are kept.

We kill trees to make books (although in the case of Nicholas Sparks I think it would be better to kill him), and what I was proposing stopped far short of killing the tree. Just sacrificing some limbs in the service of preserving literature (and home!).

So it had to get a trim. Just two branches would do the job. They were wild and crazy branches. I don't own a chain saw (and wouldn't -- they scare the crap out of me!) and I quickly discovered that my rusty handsaw wasn't up to the job, so I got my axe out of the garage and started whaling away at it. I'm actually pretty good with an axe, knowing how to use it and having a good swing, but my axe is dull and it was a hot day, and there were frequent pauses for huffing and puffing. The first branch came down reluctantly, and the second one was worse: it was high enough that I had to stand at the top of my stepladder on uneven ground and strike with the axe well over my head. Even then I was afraid it was going to drop right into my face. So for once in my life (usually these sorts of projects really bring out the Dumb in me) I did the smart thing: when it started to crack ominously I climbed down, gripped the lowest branch and pulled it the rest of the way.

Then of course I had to break these crazy branches down so that I could dispose of them. The thin ends I dragged to the wild ground at the edge of my property and threw them in. The heftier stuff I chopped up to use as firewood in my fire pit out back. I could have knocked off at some point and finished it up another day. But I was determined to get it done, although I was so exhausted by then that I could only get about four or five whacks in before I had to stop and catch my breath.

I hadn't planned for this to be the only thing I got done yesterday, but that's the way it worked out. I guess that's why chainsaws were invented. I'd have been done in nothing flat. Instead it took a big chunk of the day and I was so shagged out afterwards that all I could do was grab a shower and drag myself to the porch sofa, where even looking at the White Flower Farm catalog proved to require more effort than I could bring to it.

My neighbor has a chain saw, sitting enticingly out in the open. Perhaps he left it in plain sight to frustrate me when he heard me chopping myself silly. But they don't attempt to talk to me any more, which I guess is a pleasant side-effect of the "Midnight Mowing" I did a couple of weeks back. Oh, yes I did! Just after midnight on the day that I was woken at seven AM by Millie the Morning Mower, the Evil Bugs Bunny in my soul got the better of me. I opened the window of my playroom and blasted loud music in the general direction of their house. After about fifteen minutes of that I went out and fired up the lawnmower. I did that whole side of my house (poorly, because after all it was past midnight!) and occasionally growled at their house, out loud, "You get the message, Doc?"

Apparently they did. Just yesterday I went out and found their lawn miraculously mowed. They must have done it the day before while I was at work, because I never heard a sound!

Revenge is a dish best served with a freshly-mowed lawn.

-- Freder.

Statement of Principles

The thing that sometimes troubles me about sometimes typing some of the things that I sometimes type on this blog, is that I sometimes worry that some people will think: "So what makes your feelings so special?! So what's so unusual about you?!"

Because that's not why I type it. I type it because I think a lot of people must feel this way, because I can't possibly be alone, and maybe by typing it I can do some good for myself, and maybe sometimes someone else will see it and think, "That's just how I feel."

So -- if I have a mission for this blog, it's to reassure me that I am not alone, and to reassure others that they are not alone.

I've just been watching a heckova lot of British television tonight, and so the Asperger's part of me that wants to mimic everything I see wants to refer to my father as "me da'".

Anyway.

Me da' wrote back to me tonight, based on two previous posts: "I worry that you are still so far from healed"


Yah, so do I. But that just puts me in the same boat as millions of other people. 


I've heard it said, here or there, "We're put here to suffer." 


There's a lot to think about in those five words, especially when, dating back to Biblical times, there's always a class of people who emphatically are Not Suffering while the rest of us writhe.


Answers? I don't have any.


Apropos to nothing, last night I spent nearly $90 on 100 daffodil bulbs. I will make good use of them. In the garden? No! They will go all over my lawn. I will have daffodils next spring. Can't afford it, but, damn it, it's a Quality of Life issue.


Tamam Shud!


-- Freder.

Chance of Showers

I honestly thought that with the move behind me, things would soon be hunky-dory. All I needed was some downtime to gather myself, and I would be off again, working on personal projects, moving right along, right as rain.

But things are so not hunky-dory and the rain is a depressive one that, some days, is stronger than the drugs. I seem to be stuck. Still can't seem to get through a day without tears. Whenever Pandy Bear hears me crying he comes over to me and looks up with an expression that seems to say, "I understand. Don't be sad. We love you." and that makes it worse.

I think that the activity of the move and the focus it provided was the thing keeping sadness, relatively speaking, at bay. At least it was a distraction. There was little time to think about anything other than what needed to be done, and little to do other than forge ahead.

It shouldn't be like this. I have a nice new home filled with memories and I'm grateful for that. I'm trying to do all the right things. I talk a walk around the neighborhood every night. I'm keeping my brain fed with books and telly. I'm eating well, although lately I have begun to lose my appetite again. Can't give in to that, it had disastrous consequences for me last year.

But I feel like I'm hiding all the while, from things that are only growing stronger while I pretend they don't exist.

Then again, maybe I'm over-thinking it. I shouldn't blog when I'm in this kind of a mood. I don't know whether it releases those feelings or makes them worse.

Here's something funny: The book I've chosen for our Book of the Month here at the store has this in its description: "[Funeral for a Dog] tells the parallel stories of two writers struggling with the burden of the past and the uncertainties of the future." Hmm. Wonder why I chose it. Maybe I should read this one.

-- Freder.

A Letter to Dad

In receipt of your snail mail letter the other day. Stop beating up on yourself. What's the point? Mom's gone; nothing can be done, it can't be helped now. I'm not beating up on you and you shouldn't be beating up on you. Past is past.

The little girl's name is Jackie Evancho. I witnessed her discovery a year ago on the NBC show AMERICA'S GOT TALENT. Mom and I watched this show obsessively and I have continued to watch it obsessively since. It was one of the things that got me through last summer. The show is full of surprises: people who come on virtually swaggering about how great they are, only to completely flame out in front of millions of people -- and then this little girl comes on, completely humble,  and you don't know what to expect, but then that voice comes out. 

Just another one of the surprises that life hands out -- and you have to be thankful for the GOOD surprises when they come along, because the bad ones are so very bad.

I must confess that I'm so far along in my thinking of that bitch who calls herself my sister that it takes me somewhat aback to see a letter that's addressed to me -- and to someone who no longer exists. If she ever did. The past is becoming a fantasy world, and she is nothing more to me than a ghost. Thank god for that.

Maybe lunch next week at your convenience?

DT