Words

I've spent a lot of today with words. It's been a beautiful, yet heart-wrecking experience. And this whole time, this whole day (this whole weekend), the DUMBO Art Gallery openings have been going on. And we missed it. But we won't next year. And as good fortune would have it, my guilt over not going to DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass in Brooklyn) was rectified by the mailer we received from the Park Slope Gallery, where my old college friend Eric will host his first solo show in New York City since he moved here, in mid-November. Luckily Craig's little sis and her husband will be here that weekend, so we can show them the local arts of New York. Oh, so back to words. I saved my homework assignment up for Sunday, which is quite common of me to do. It isn't that I can't just sit myself down on a weeknight. It more or less involves going through the typical process of writer's block, where I do everything humanly possible to avoid the computer, dishes and laundry and dusting and bathroom scrubbing seem better than writing, to the point where Sunday I realize, Hmm. Something's due tomorrow. So, this morning I balled up in the corner of the bed with a "Writing Fiction" book. Then I went out for Diet Cokes. Then I returned to re-read, for the hundredth time, my typed assignment from my instructor. Then I went back out to grab my laundry cube from the Asian ladies across the street. Then I came home and unfolded the cube. Things went something like that. I managed to put off writing until about 2 o'clock. By that point, I had no other options available to me. Craig was watching football. I needed to just sit down and do the damn homework already. It's why I took a class, right? Once I got into it, yes, that's where I exist. It's where I feel alive. Writing one sentence makes me feel more vibrant in color than anything in the world. And listening to my own words in my head knock all around and make sensible sounds together - that is passion, and love. But, I am so far away from being someone who does this for a living. So far away. So instead of doting on myself and my Sunday accomplishments, what I really crave is one person who will please please please read Aimee Bender's story from her latest collection (Willful Creatures), called "Fruit and Words". I read it on the subway this week, and I practically needed to go home with faux illness, it was that good. I looked up after finishing it, noticed that we were 2 stops from our subway station for work, and I wanted to throw myself onto the train across the platform that was headed back in Manhattan's direction, wanted to re-read the story for how just gorgeous each word is. It's hard. I am really not sure who to call about a handful of words that I love this much. So instead of struggling to think of who could appreciate what happened to me when I read that story, I simply wrote to Elizabeth, who put together the not-Chick Lit book and has been defending herself ever since. She led that one day workshop I went to in SoHo. And she replied almost immediately - she didn't recall that particular story but would surely go back and read it again. Her anthology includes Aimee. But the whole feeling, the whole idea of just loving someone's words so much that you can't think of anything else...it put me in a different frame of mind this week. I sort of floated through the days gazing out my window office at mirages filled with books, and words. If only Aimee taught at my school. Because I adore my instructor now - she's a brilliant brain - but I long to hear Aimee lead her students to places in their minds they didn't know existed. I long to hear her read her own words. If California weren't so far away! Maybe I would go. But for now, I am perfectly happy to sit here in New York and know how unbelievable it is that I just get to live here, and to let the words flow over me like sugar water.**My beautiful boyfriend enters his third decade this week. That's another thing that matters. Him. His existence. Happy Birthday this week, Handsome.