Sometimes...There Is Just Not Enough Wine

Whine that title out...puh-lease.  This is not pretty.

C'mon hasn't that happened to you?  Finish a bottle of wine, want more but realize that you've had too much to drive and the liquor store is closed anyway?
OK so maybe I'm strange.

But, I am also watching, Old Yeller.  That's right, best doggone dog in the west.  I AM a masochist.  I know how this movie ends.  We borrowed it from the library on VHS and my Mom, Erik, Sonja and I sobbed watching it.  But I just can't resist.  I'm feeling nostalgic tonight.

If we could be more honest about life, feelings, all kinds of things, I believe that our stress would melt away. But, I'm lucky.

I'm poor.  No, really I'm under the poverty limit.  But the thing is, I don't care.  I'm managing in a way I've never managed before.  In this poverty that I'm experiencing, I've been learning so much about life and I'm being taught about truths that cannot be learned or taught in a class or from a book.

And what does all this mean?   Well, that is the million dollar question isn't it?

Here's my thinking:  Most art, true, gut-wrenching art(music, writing, painting) comes from folks who've been through the worst in life.  You know why?

Those people are so in tune with the emotions needed to create, the intense variation of life.

Most artists that I know, do not live off their parent's credit cards, or abundance.  Most great artists struggle to be able to have the time and space to create.  Most have day jobs that they barely tolerate just so they can have the right head space to create...Artists do it because the have to...there is no other choice.

Kind of like animal-lovers.  We can't help but have cats and dogs because our lives are not complete without them.  And see I observe my own age-group.  We've been handed a heck of a lot of things from our parents and have gotten used to a comfortable life.  Sure there are so many things stacked against us too, not as many opportunities, inflation, higher taxes, incredibly high student loans...

Where the heck am I going with this?  Too much wine, but not enough.
Aw what the hell...I'm getting involved with Ole Yeller.  Everything comes down to impressions,
 he's an ugly yeller dog
But hey, he ain't an ugly yeller dog, he's a purty yeller dog.


Someone's ugly yeller dog might be another's purty yeller dog.  And this is how I feel about the creative world...hell, this is how I feel about love.

My man might be an ugly yeller dog to you, but maybe he's a purty yeller dog to me.

But who cares?  Impressions, social media spinning.  For the USA the country of individuality, there seems to be an awful lot of conformity.

Cause in the end aren't we all just going to catch Ebola and shit ourselves to death?

Or contract some Hydry-phoby.

I really hope that no animals were harmed in the making of this film, Disney corporation....

Ready, Set...

I know, I write so much sad stuff on here.

I won't apologize.  Here's why:

There is something most of you DON'T know.  

In writing this, I am opening up my shame. 

Almost three months ago, my father was arrested.  I cannot go into details, but he will be spending about two years in prison.   I have not seen or spoken to him since March.  

Eight months.  I lost a mother to cancer and a father to...himself, prison? stupidity?

Yes, I am now an orphan in many ways.  My nearest family is two hours away.

Each year on this day, I think about my life.  I stare at my hands, observe the lines, the creases, wonder where they will be next year.  Isn't life just a bunch of anticipatory acts?

We are always almost tomorrow, next year, I mean I think of the future far too often that sometimes I forget to live in the moment of this very second.

I got paid today.  Money was put into my bank account.  I got paid for something that I wrote. Sure it wasn't a lot of money, but I don't even care.

Before she died, my Mom told me that she was sad because she wouldn't see my success.  She told me that I am meant to write.  She understood it.  Even if I was a puzzle to her at times.

Writers are a strange bunch of people.  When people used to ask me what I want to do with my life, I never have been true to myself. I've always felt that I need to give an answer that makes sense to their query.  Because of my innate people pleasing drive, I haven't let myself be who I am.

Cannot remember the first story that I ever wrote.  But, I do remember being eighteen coming home after work and sitting at the computer in my old family room, the faux wooden panelling, the green of the woods coming through the windows, the way it smelled so balsamic in the afternoon sun.  I wrote my first story.  It was forty pages long.  I lost steam, I didn't know where it was going to go.  But in those moments sitting at that computer(and this is 1998 folks so you can just imagine the size of the computer.) I was so happy in the process of writing.  My mind was in another place.  I began to see the people I was writing about as real people with motivations beyond my own imagining.

I don't know what defines good stories vs. literature anymore.  I just know that when I read something and feel something, that's a good story.


Recurring dreams of giving birth happen to me all the time, I see my babies in my sleep.  These are not real babies, I know that now.  They are the gift of my imagination.  I am standing on a precipice waiting to take flight, I've just been too scared until now.

We take our pleasures where we may, I take mine in writing.  I disappear at times into my own mind, worlds I can create.  This year I learned something very important.

When writing I used to worry about what people would think about me through my writing.  Now, I just don't give a crap.  Love it? Fantastic. Hate it?  Brilliant. Think it is disgusting? Now we are getting somewhere.

Hiding isn't for me.  My writing is in a process right now, birthed from sadness and my own hopes.  Besides, even if I never get paid again...I will keep doing it.  Because like Stephen King says, "Why do you assume I have a choice?"

Tomorrow I enter my 35th year on the planet.

Orphan. Paid Author. Aunt.   I became all those in the past year...just can't help but wonder what this year will bring to my plate.