So Far Away From Me

Sarah came home, winded and torn up from a blustering ride from Boston to New York. One week before Christmas, can you imagine what Manhattan, especially Chinatown looked like when the Fung Wah (money is no object) bus pulled up? Hell. Pure Hell. She was blistering mad when she finally arrived and all her anger and frustration came pouring out and then turned to tears. Leila convinced her to go with her and a few friends to dinner. They are out now and I'm sure Sarah is feeling better. Growing up is the hardest thing any of us do except maybe going into the older aged lane, ready to exit. Watched Sylvia Browne on Montel today while waiting for Leila to have her sonagram. Sylvia says the other side is about three feet off the ground of where we are! Shut my mouth. Makes it just sound so much more doable. I never fancied walking on clouds. It's all relative.

Showed my three composition classes Eve Ensler's "What I Want My Words to Do to You" about a writing program with the women in the maximum security prison of Bedford Hills in Upstate New York. I had seen it three times already and after the sixth time I was ready just to sit down and cry, a deep, mournful, this world is hard cry. One of my students, on her way out, said, "I don't feel sorry for them." Then you don't feel sorry for yourself I wanted to say. It's all relative.

This thing about slapping a novel together is like never sleeping and yet being in a continual slumbering state. Brenda Ueland says "moodling" and going slowly is the way imagination creeps out. All my instincts were right. Trying to stay geared up, on the fast track, career girl mode was not my method. Stepping off and "watching the wheels go round and round" is my answer.

Artists, I realize, manifest what isn't there. The rest of the population - long given up on creativity - manage what has already been manifested. The artists suffer but receive the joy of nothing to something that only comes from seeing something that was not originally there. It was sitting safely on the other side.