Are You in There?

There is a taboo in good writing about having a character describe himself or herself as they look into a mirror. It is considered cheating to do so. Even in case of omnipresent narrator, usually that narrator is inside the head of but one character. He is omnipresent within one head, but not in the head of the other characters. So, we do not find our narrator standing at the mirror, describing himself, because it is not natural to do so. There's other reasons against the practice, that is just one of them. One can feel a tear run down one's cheek, he can't see it, or watch it glisten.

So, I look at my reflection in the mirror. Am I inside that person? Hello? Are you in there? Are you in there?

I am terrible at engaging people with whom I speak. It's drives my wife crazy. Sometimes, at the grocery store I will look into someone's eyes just to gauge its effect. Otherwise, I speak to the air, my feet, or the computer screen. What has caused this? Why?

I don't remember actually seeing people as they are, perhaps ever. Can we look and see without making an immediate judgement? Do we only see people with the idea of our interaction with them? Even seeing faces on the television screen, in photographs, or on the computer screen, can we not judge?

Are you guys in there? Behind the eyes, are you there? I recognize your face, even from years and years ago, but do you see that soul that resides behind the eyes or beneath the skin?

One of my Facebook friends has only her eyes as her profile picture. They are beautiful eyes, and we knew each other in high school, and I never saw those eyes, really saw them. I sure as hell never looked behind them.

Are you in there? Have the years stolen you away, or did I ever know you ever? Hello?

Why is it that I know more about these high school people now than I ever knew back then? Was I blind? Am I blind?

Everything we see, hear, or feel goes through a filter. It is measured, weighed, and judged. Can we think without language? That is a question posed sometimes, but can we do any of it without language? Can we feel without language? Plunge a blindfolded man's hands into iced water and if that man trusts you he will feel cold intially. If the same man does not trust you, he may feel you are plunging his hands into the fire and at first, he will believe it is heat, not cold he feels.

I don't understand how I have missed so much beauty. Never have I been a sunset type of person. Sunsets take patience. Do you want to watch the sunset? How long does it take?

I don't remember looking into my childrens' eyes. My wife, yes, I have looked into her eyes. Old girlfriends, no, I never saw them in there.

What's is wrong with me? Hello, are you in there? Have you ever been anywhere else, but in there? Have I ever gotten out of my own head? Can I turn off the filter for just a fucking minute? I'm missing so much. Hello?

Guts, Big Shots, and Private Confessions

I learned three lessons this week. I saw greed personified, I read "Guts" by Kristen Johnston, and I got wound up and confessed something very revealing to a friend of mine, and she didn't end up hating me.

I will tackle the second two lessons after I tackle the first. As some of you know, I am working again after being "effectively unemployed" for over two-and-one-half years. No, don't fret for my family, I was never without a check, nor did I use up any of that mythical happy retirement dough. I got this great job, where after suffering the slings and arrows of government employment for over 30 years, I am suddenly respected, valued, and actually writing for my living. I never thought I would be able to say that.

Now I don't want to embarrass anyone, so I will try to disguise this part just a bit. The firm I work for sells franchises, but they also perform a service. In this case, the service was to remove everything but three pieces of awful furniture from an apartment in San Francisco. Everything gets thrown into a giant truck and away we go. It was my one day to accompany our workers to the job so I could learn the nuances of our service. We were met at the apartment by a 70ish, short guy, who led us up to a third floor walkup--that means no elevator--and we walked down the hall, into this apartment.

It was filthy. From what I understand, someone had died in this apartment. There was a church robe in a plywood closet, a picture of Jesus near the front door, and pornographic movies and magazines stacked up in a box. It smelled oddly sweet, but medicinally so. There were mouse traps, roach traps, a rug that looked 50 years old. We removed absolutely everything but a few sticks of furniture. Bathtub, toilet, sink, personal items, everything but cleaning products and the aforementioned furniture.

While working, the real property manager, a tall guy about 40 arrived. Here's how he and his posse climbed the three flights of stairs: Tall guy first, all smiles and full of bon mots and bullshit, then came the shorter property manager, following on the heels of the tall big shot, then a short girl, low-cut blouse, about 25, holding a ledger or a legal pad. It was like she could have been holding big shots makeup, or like she was his personal assistant--take this down. Big shot wants to nickle and dime every transaction, and he acts like God's gift to the whole world.

I thought of him like this though: "How can you prance around like the fucking blessed saint of apartments and allow people to live like you do?" Oh, I know, not everything is in his control, but this apartment was the worst excuse for a rental I have ever seen. The fucking floor in the kitchen was bare wood, not wood flooring, but ancient sub-flooring. All the plumbing was ancient and rusted, and big shot doesn't seem to have any empathy in his entire being. I felt very thankful that even at its worst, my life never took that turn.

Onto "Guts" by Kristen Johnston. This is the second book I have read about addiction. I don't consider myself an addicted to anything but depression, FB, writing, feeling sorry for myself, and at various times, golf, surfing, playing music, sleeping, etc. Substances, not very often. Acceptance? Oh, I need it, I need it, I need it, please, please, please.

Kristen talks to the reader. I love the conversational style of writing. I use it myself. The book starts off funny, like the ha-ha kind of funny. First page and onto the second good, but I wondered a bit if I the book was going to be all funny, and what... no money. Second page of text cures that. The revelation is made, still funny, unless you consider the implications of what is said.

Our society has long celebrated the drunk, the stoned, the mentally-ill. It's a joke right? My generation laughed a the drunk guy on the Jackie Gleason show, Foster Brooks--the lovable lush, even Barney on the Simpsons has his moments. Later came the Hippie-Dippy Weatherman, Cheech and Chong, and even Roseanne Roseanna Danna. All this is funny stuff unless it is real--unless it is you.

Kristen was the functional drunk--the functional addict. Until it all backfired on her. We all know her on "Third Rock from the Sun." Think about that show. The actors had it wired. It was funny without being absurd or maudlin or stooping to a series of stupid jokes about tits or pandering to the kiddies. But make no mistake, Kristen was high whenever she got a chance during the run of that show.

What was the reason? Acceptance. It's a lousy deal being nearly six-feet tall at 12. It's a lousy deal being made fun of for something you can't help. It sucks being the girl no one loves in high school. This is no celebrity pity party though. Kristen laughs at herself, at others, and she laughs through a description of harrowing intensity when the years of abuse she had been dealing her body finally, and dramatically, takes it's pound of flesh.

Look, I like this book a lot. It isn't because I think Kristen Johnston is beautiful, or because I dated two women over 5'10" in my life and they don't scare me, or because I wish the author would read this and think me fabulous. Don't get me wrong, approval is my drug of choice. But there is something being said in this book that is real. The conclusion isn't all wrapped up into a neat package of happily ever after. It isn't even one day at a time. While Kristen doesn't say it directly, I think she knows that even AA meetings are often just another form of addiction. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a short story about a drunk and if I remember, a child, where one is just holding his breath about whether the main character is going to screw up and lapse into drunkenness again. The tension is built just wondering if he can manage to stay sober. I think "Guts" leaves us with a bit of that. I think she will stay clean. She thinks she can stay clean, but there's always a possibility that she, or you or me can fall back into this dark hole. Yeah, it's funny and scary.

Finally, thanks to Shelley for listening to something really personal and understanding. It meant a lot to me in this remarkable week.

You All Scare Me!

Nothing about writing ever scared me. I've written stories and poetry since high school. I remember spilling my guts in some poem for an English class and having the teacher pull me aside to praise the poem. I suspect she found something disturbing in its subject matter, I don't know. I can't remember the subject, but I never held back any feelings when writing. Maybe that praise was what set me going, I don't know.

I wrote when I first came to San Francisco. Horrible hippie poems. I would corner young women with this stuff, and they were kind enough to be kind, and spry enough to avoid me after that. I tried to write music in my twenties. I remember some woman wanted to form a duo with our two guitars and I was supposed to sing. I hauled out a white man's "What's Going On" I had written and I never saw this lady again. She was a hell of a good guitarist. I could sing, but couldn't play well, and I sure as hell couldn't write music or lyrics.

Until I hit my thirties, I didn't write again, and I had stopped figuring on being a rock star several years after being "dumped" from the duo. Oh, I jammed around town, once in a while getting a little face time at a bar playing the same old tired blues riff. I played once with a friend at UC Med School in SF at a talent show. The crowd wanted us to play another song, but it was one and done. I never wrote songs after my "disgrace."

In my thirties, my good friend Rick Geist started writing. He'd found a great writing teacher in San Diego, Joan Oppenheimer who nurtured him. I decided I could write too again after he started. Joan O. took me under her wing at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. I took either first place that year or the next for fiction. I won honorable mention for worst first sentence, something about how the Scottish Highlander always felt uncomfortable while crossing the piranha-filled Amazon in his kilt. Okay, no one said I was subtle. Next year at the conference, I won an award again for fiction.

I published my first short stories in a collection of fiction by mail carriers. The readings were blind--no names were used to decide who got in. I placed two stories in that collection. Okay, I thought, I might have some talent. No, that's not true at all. I thought I was the next coming of Hemingway. Doubt always crept in though. I thought, hey, it's a book where the writers are limited to but a small segment of the population. Then I placed another story in a literary magazine. Then another. I got in very small magazines, then the Santa Clara University Review, twice. And I took an honorable mention in a contest for a story in a Chicago magazine (defunct) known as Hyphen with a real author on the cover! Later I got nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Funny thing about that. This newspaper-type literary magazine someplace in the Midwest, sent me a note telling me that I had been nominated. I was very happy. The Pushcart is a big award. Some major authors have received this. I guess you can consider it the small literary press' equivalent of a Pulitzer. Except I never saw an official note that they accepted this magazine's nomination. I like to say I was nominated to be nominated. In resumes it's nominated. Between you and me, it is the other.

Anyway, I don't remember how I started writing for magazines. I think I pitched a story, the magazine accepted, and I wrote the article. Just that easy, though I didn't know much about writing non-fiction. Pretty soon I was writing for one regional magazine, then this group I was working for put out another, and I had two jobs suddenly. One writing for a pittance. The other working for the Postal Service. Same with the newspaper, I walked into the office, said I could write features, and suddenly I was writing features and straight reporting even. I got a cover story or two or three out of the paper, but when they gave me less than a day to turn around an interview and a short article about Ken Kesey's return to Palo Alto, I had thought I died and gone to heaven. I always liked Kesey, and a chance to chat with him, and then see him, and being trusted with such a piece with such a short turnaround was fantastic. I never thought I couldn't do it, I just did.

Writing has been this great equalizer for me, for what, 25 years now. Otherwise, you folks scare me to death. I want to impress you all. Listen up--Leah, Pamela, Jackie, Ron W., Shelley, my wife, my kids, my grandkids, sisters, my aunt. My boss from Havard. My new friends and old.  I won't bore you with my upbringing anymore. It sucked. I never felt like I was a normal kid. I know, Pamela has told me my misgivings are felt by everyone. I agree. That's true. It doesn't make it any better. For a long time I believed I was fooling people with smoke and mirrors as far as my writing was concerned. Yes, I always thought I could get by, but come on, my grammar was awful, I couldn't speak two words coherently, so how could I write? Surely I would be found out. I have never gotten over wanting to impress you all, either that, or I would rather you would never find out how full of bullshit I am.

So, this boils down to a book review for a book I have not read. Here's how I found this book that is next on my reading list. I noticed that a FB "friend" had Kristen Johnston as a friend. Kristen Johnston is the beautiful, tall, woman who played an alien on "Third Rock from the Sun." So I friended her, or in the parlance of a non-entity like myself, she allowed herself to be friended by me. I'd always been wowed by her beauty and sense of humor.  I felt happy to check out her likes and such. After looking over Kristen's page now and again--god, she is pretty--I noticed she had written a book called "Guts." Okay, so now I felt like an asshole for sending her a link to my Dog Chronicles, because it is like, "Gee, you write. Read my stuff you book writer you."

Well, I find out "Guts" is supposed to be this fantastic and funny book about her out-of-control life as a drug addict, and her struggles with being this big, gawky girl who never felt like she fit in. Hmm. Sound familiar? Today, I was looking over her page, and there was a quote from someone, or maybe Kristen herself, that said, "It's none of your business what other people think of you." Okay, like explosions are suddenly going off in my head. If you don't know, what the hell. So, I suspect all you folks out there feel like me sometimes. I came by my inability to connect by one path, you maybe came at it from another. Who knows?

Look, "Guts" is called "Guts" because Kristen ended up in London lying on a hospital table with her guts hanging out of her stomach. Not sure of the whole story, because I haven't read the book yet, but do not doubt that I will. If this beautiful woman, who was part of that fun television show, felt so disconnected from reality that she couldn't handle the world, what does that say about any of our doubts? That they are unreal? That we all suffer somehow from this anorexic view of our beings, that we are not what we see in the mirror, or in the mirror in the eyes of others? I'd like it if I could step away from this feeling that I don't belong. That I'm not good enough to work as a public relations guy. That I am not a writer. That I am fooling you all into chatting with me, or answering my posts. I'd like to be through with that. I can't say I am, but I'm learning all the time.

Kristen Johnston is a hoot. I urge you to buy her book and "friend" her. I'm learning things just by reading what's on her page. Someday, I may just develop the confidence I have had to pursue writing jobs, and apply it in all my activities. Until then, I remain, your slightly fucked-up friend.