The Fence

"I don’t want my editor to know. I don't want anyone to know. Do you understand me?" I can hear the desperation. I am picturing him in dress socks and a dingy white terry cloth bathrobe. I lie back on the floor and balance the phone between my cheek and the coffee table leg.

"I understand."

He starts to throw instructions at me. "You have to be convincing. It has to sound like me. I don't use fragments. And, and I don't leave loose ends."

"I know."

"You know?" He sounds like he's about to have a psychotic break. "How do you know? What do you know?"

"You don't leave loose ends. I know. I have read your work." I'm rolling my eyes now.

He calms just a little for just a second. "You have? I didn't realize you were a fan."

"Oh, I'm not a fan. I don't like you're work. But I can replicate it, no problem." I realize as soon as I say it, that I shouldn't have said it.

"Why? What the fuck! What kind of a thing is that to say? What don't you like about it?" He's back to brinking.

"What difference does it make? Are you hiring me to like you, or to write for you?" I already have the feeling I blew this job. And like I always say, the best thing to do in a bad situation is to make it worse.

He exhales as if the air was toxic. "I want you to write for me. I'm just making sure you know my style."

I nod as if that will help this move along. "No loose ends. I get it."

"You know what that means?" He is somewhere in between panicked and insulted.

"Yes. It means you don't like to let your reader think. You like to over explain everything, so the reader can not use any imagination."

I pull away from the phone as he yells, "I write specific stories, with specific information! There is no room for the reader to create their own story line!"

"Whatever you say." I grumble.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

I think he may be crying at this point. "All it means is that I know your style. And I can do this. And no one will know it's not you." Because you write like you're composing directions, or a recipe. Not like you're weaving a tale, or describing something intangible. Not like a writer. More like an emotionless editor.

He demands I give him an example. Then another. He interrupts before I finish it. He wants to know how to take pieces away without dismantling his plot. This goes on for 20 minutes. I finally have to stop him. "Look, are you hiring me to teach you how to write, or to write for you."

"To write for me!" He had to be reminded again. He's now angry, and he begins to bark more about the piece.

And he sinks into his head space. He is right at the spot. The Spot, that has won. That he can't pass. That he can't write through. He takes a long running leap with the story and then drops it. Then, he picks up a piece he tossed a few paragraphs ago, and lobs it. It flies. And then it hits the wall and just disintegrates. He takes another run, this time he runs along the wall for a while, actually tracing the way down the spiral, to the end, where it sinks into nothing. He begins sounding off, in some kind of brainstorming stammer. A sentence that has no end. A thought that isn't coherent. A Word, that should somehow belong here but it doesn't. He's actually explaining it to me. He's explaining writer's block.

This, of course, is much more interesting then the story he can't write.

I sit up. I grip the phone. I listen. Intently.

He sounds like a guard dog that keeps running into the same fence, and can't get past it. He knows he has to get to the other side of the wall. He just can't find the way. He digs, he jumps, he claws and bites. He begins a new attempt before the prior is even finished failing.

He is speaking to me through the fence. I'm on the other side.

Suddenly I can feel his fingers clawing at the fence. He's raw, and revealed.

"Are you even fucking listening to me?" He's screaming now. And it's poignant and naked.

"Yes." My voice is soft. I have to clear my throat to even find it. "Yes, I am. I'm listening to every Word."

He stops. He waits. He thinks. I can almost hear it. He recognizes that I'm completely sincere. "Why are you suddenly listening to me?"

I pause, and I make sure I mean it before I speak it. Calmly I tell him, "Because this is the best thing you've ever written."

Bookshelves and Hybrids

You're a complicated hybrid.
Sitting back and letting him observe
Figuring you out
Figuring your situation out.

Open to it. No games. No preconceptions.

I'm as scared as you are.
But I have more to lose.

(He thinks he seduced her.
She thinks nothing of the sort.)

Change is immanent.

Look again. Take another long hard look.

You're a complicated hybrid.

"No one will love me when I'm young and beautiful again." - 6 Feet Under

It's been a long time. It's been wonderful.

I think a person's bookshelf says a lot about them. What they have and how they keep it. Where they are and where they may be interested to journey. What they know. What has been kept. And what has been released. The letting go. The dust. The dreaming instigated but never used. The sparks that didn't ignite. And the ones that burned out. The arrangement. What's displayed. The care, or lack of. The spaces. The things that mingle with the books. The bookends.

The book Ends.

Be mesmerized. Be enchanted. Be alive and awake. Let the world affect you. Let yourself love the light.

Listen to her, heal the moment, take over and say the right thing. Maybe it's not your responsibility, but it sure would be nice.

I didn't think I would want this, or have this. I didn't know. Thank God someone knew better.

I'm complicated. But that doesn't mean I'm game playing, or keeping secrets. I'm letting you see how my mind works. It's pretty different, isn't it. But I still have to go to Walmart and buy dog food.

It isn't all about you. There are other things. There are reasons. Reasons you will never know. Take it back. Take this back. Fix this moment.

Make this a movie people will recommend. And watch again and again.

I remember you

It's hard to face your demons head on. It's hard to own these things and say, this is mine. I did this.
All the pain you caused, all the hurt you inflicted on me... what lingers is that you don't own any of it. You don't see it.
Your incapacity makes my reaction to it all the more sinful.
I could not continue. All steps until that one are clear.
I remember you.
18 years of memories.
I believe I had to walk away.
I know I should have differently.
Higher roads and knowing better.
I wish you all good things.

The Gathering

"If you can help it, don't lose too many things at the same time." - W
"If you had your whole life to do over again, who would you love?" -Intersection
"If you could marry a friend, or a lover, who would you choose?" -American Quilt
"Who do you love when you come undone?" -Duran Duran
"Everyone I know goes away in the end." - Nine Inch Nails

W is right. Change is not natural, surrendering parts of your life is hard, and your id will fight it every step of the way.

But it happens. Entropy. Change is inevitable. It comes, and you have to separate yourself from certain things, and faces, and places. Choices are made. Friendships dissolved, lovers betrayed. He's right. Hold on to what you can, when you can. It's all going anyway, but you get the opportunity to just slow it down for a moment. To release slowly. To say good-bye.

Less then 24 hours.

I drove into Jersey, because I had to go to Pearl. But I didn't have to go to Pearl really, it was just another excuse to go to Barnes and Noble. I stood outside.

She showed up with cappuccino, and we sat on the curb in the wind, watching night come. We talked about choices and aching. We laughed, and then we got a little teary. We drank our cappuccino. The urge passed, I didn't go into the bookstore. I drove back to New York. I headed home.

Driving past the bar, I noticed Stacy's car. I went inside. I drank vodka with Stacy and her Ex, and someone named Pete who apparently grew up near where I did in Brooklyn, but I never met him before. We shot some pool. Then we left: Stacy and her ex in her car, Pete and I in mine. We went to a new club behind a go-go bar. I nursed a $12 beer. I read an exquisite poem on the bathroom wall that made me think about regret and loss. We left there, and I focused intensely on Stacy's car in front of mine. I thought about David, and the roof of that car. Stacy and I logged a lot of miles in that car.

At Stacy's, I sat in the window seat and played with her ferret. The guys made us breakfast. We watched Midnight Run, and talked about song lyrics.

I left alone, and drove to Dunkin Donuts for coffee. I got home at, I don't know, 6:00? And I started working on the first installment of a new job.

It was finished by noon. I hit send.

I tried to take a nap but it wouldn't take me. So I took a bath, and some aspirin. I put on a clean pair of old jeans, size 8, so I think they once belonged to Laura, but who knows at this point.

My contractor called. I didn't answer. But I listened as he spoke on the answering machine:

"Veronica, I got your email. I can't believe you finished the first installment already. This is fucking good, Very. "

I can't hear the ending because I've walked outside onto the back porch. Sometimes it's unbearable to take criticism. And sometimes, praise is worse. It feels like God slapping me in the face. I am elated for the attention, and reduced to nothing all at the same time.

I have to sleep. I have to eat. I think about Hunter S. Thompson's warnings that once I do the latter, I will do the former. I think about a friend I hurt, and lost. The hurt she inflicted on me doesn't seem as relevant as the regret I feel for having handled something so important so badly. I go back inside, and decide to paint the kitchen in the spring.

I lay down on the bed with a bag of Tortilla chips. I eat until I start to cry. I can't really eat when I'm crying.

And I fell asleep.

Not me.

Venus descends and I try to remember.
Some goddesses are prettier than others.

A little demonic, a little innocent. A little unique. A little rabbit.

I needed to feel heard today. That's not always the way I feel. I usually need the opposite. But today I needed to know someone was hearing me. I reached out twice. Strangers in the airwaves. It was enough.

This afternoon I got a job. Contract work. 20 installments. High profile. They won't be my reviews, my legacy, my fame. But they will be my Words.