I really owe Dr. Freeman a lot. He's my good friend and frequent writing partner. What a great birthday present he gave me. A book. (Surprise.)
A Great Unrecorded History, the new biography of E. M. Forster by Wendy Moffat, has gotten some good reviews. Some have said that she focuses too much on Forster's belated sex life. Quite wrong, I say. She does a great job with issues others have skated around. (P. N. Firbank, writing the official biography soon after Forster's death, left out a lot.) Moffat had the benefit of working with material not before available, namely, Forster's Sex Diary. What a lot we learn.
I won't recount details here, it's a lot of fun and you should read it yourself. Forster kept the diary mostly because he had few people to confide in about his feelings and his relationships. Unlike today, when we talk about everything to everyone.
However, this isn't so much a review as it is an appreciation. Moffat has shown through a great example how to approach material that others have gone over before you. How to plow a new row in an already planted field. She's given me a look into a new project of my own. One I thought I wouldn't be able to tackle for a while. So, hat's off to you Wendy Moffat.
And Dr. Freeman, I'm trying to think of something significant to give you for your birthday very soon...
Okay, so I haven't been writing. Put it down to romance, or business, or the effect of daily sunshine on the already-indolent. Sloth, plain and simple.
The goal of the blog was to get me writing more regularly, and, in that sense, it's been somewhat successful. Dr. Freeman and I published that little ode to Christopher Isherwood in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January. We then finished off the Dead Poet Project in the spring. (An article on W. H. Auden's relationship with Isherwood for a forthcoming British anthology.) With all that writing, who needs a blog?
Also, in the meantime, to update you on previous posts: I sold that rat-trap in Duluth I used to own. At a loss. After 36 months on the market. I feel lucky given These Tough Economic Times. Also, I was forced to relinquish the Writing Porch, both because I loaned the laptop to a friend and because I had to vacate the apartment when the owner decided he wanted to live in it. The nerve.
Then the plans for writing in these long, summer nights in Palm Springs. Who can write with a love-interest around? But I won't tell tales out of school. Plus he's away for the summer, so what's stopping me from a few weekly stream-of-consciousness ramblings fueled by a spot of vodka? (Or gin and Dubonnet, as the fake Queen_UK spouts on Twitter.)
I mentioned the sloth.
But wait, a new project is cooking. Nothing like a new project to get your writing juices flowing. It looks so good, and so long (it'll take five years, I'm thinking), that the blog will cry out! as a diversion from the real work.
And PS? My friend and model blogger Jocelyn has packed her family up and taken them to TURKEY for a year. She's blogging about it, with drawings by her multi-talented husband, Byron, over at layingfallow.com. Stop by.
My sister and I said the same thing when I finally received an offer on my house, which has been for sale since I left Duluth in July 2007.
I truly can't think of the last time I used that phrase.
The following week, a friend was approved for tenure at her college. It had been rough going. After the committee and the administration had passed it, she still had to wait for the board to approve. They did. Neverthless, she didn't trumpet her success.
"I don't want to jinx it!" she said, in hushed tones. After all, she's not really "tenured" until next fall when she comes back for her fifth year. I think she told her dad.
It's funny how major life experiences can send us back to childhood, to superstition. I'm not really superstitious at all, but this house thing has gotten me nervous. I never did bury a statue of St. Joseph in the back yard, but I wouldn't be surprised if my agent did.
So after living in southern California for two-and-a-half years, I am close to selling my house in Minnesota. For far less than I bought it. For just a wee bit more than I owe on it. Which means I'll still have to bring my checkbook to the closing (metaphorically speaking, as I won't actually be attending the closing in person) mostly to pay the agent fees.
Considering the whole It's the End of the World as We Know It nature of the housing crisis, I still consider myself lucky and will not bemoan my lost thousands too much. Folks I know have lost tens of thousands, and other folks I know have lost their homes while they were still living in them. I was not a victim of a scam, or a sub-prime mortgage, or balloon payments, or a bad romance (well, not this time). I just got a job in a different part of the country and couldn't sell my house.
Since it's nearly done, and I may never see the inside of it again, I'll post a couple of memories of the house and the times it had. Enjoy. I did.
My good friend Jean at my Elizabeth Taylor party.
Another good friend, Tami, at ET party (note the purple cocktail).
The big dig, to fix a broken water main and repair the driveway, cost nearly $10,000 and took six months.
Looking at these I remember painting the living room and dining room. Dark red dining room and mustardy yellow living room, so warm in the morning light. I decorated them to look like a southern California bungalow. "If you can't live there, you might as well pretend," said the X-BF. Prescient.
There are other photos of living in Duluth that involve winter and sports and winter sports. But those will have to wait for another time.
Every ten years or so I eat beets just to see if I still hate them. Sure enough, no matter how you slice, cook, steam, or candy them, beets are the most disgusting food in the world to me. The only time I have ever enjoyed them was shredded for a sweetener in a chocolate cake. Even Oprah can recommend that one, see here.
Some things can be gotten over, some not. I don't even want to get over my hatred of beets, but every now and then I test it out.
Yeah, I'm going up there.
Fear is another thing entirely. Fear has often ruled my life, in big ways and small. Generally timid as a kid, I carry into my adulthood specific areas of anxiety. (See, I've learned a bigger vocabulary now, but the feelings are the same.) I tend not to rush into things, take new experiences cautiously, and don't go where I "have no business" going.
At the age of about four, my sister and I went on the Ferris wheel at the fair. The rocking of the seats scared me a little right away. The wheel went up one stage: I was very frightened. By the time the wheel went up two more stages, I was screaming so much the operator, protesting that he never does this, put the wheel into reverse and let me get off. I couldn't have been more than 20 feet off the ground. It was the Ferris wheel equivalent of the kiddy pool. But I felt totally disconnected from anything solid. I was floating in the air, bound to fall and get hurt.
That fear, not exactly a fear of heights, but it's hard to pinpoint otherwise, has always been with me.
I tested out a ropes course once. Also known as a challenge course, these are the wires strung between poles that you climb and do a tightrope walk while your team mates hold onto the harnesses and cheer you on. Somehow it's meant to teach team work and, yes, make you face and overcome your fear. (I did the Husky Challenge at St. Cloud State University, see it here.)
Well, I did that: I managed (fully tethered and safe) to walk from the pole out to the center of the wire. Yea! faced that fear. Getting back to the pole wasn't as easy.
Once out onto the wire, fear and panic had me. Gentle, calm encouragement from the trainer got me back to the pole. Once hanging on to the pole, however, I could not climb down. This is what is known as being "petrified." For once, mind and body were in total unison: don't move, don't let go.
I told Sean, My Tormentor this story the other day, after bouldering in Joshua Tree National Park. He tried empathy, "Yeah, when I was a kid..."
"I was 35," I said.
Gene, showing no fear.
The common notion that you can do something to "overcome" your fears is crap, Dear Reader. Face your fears, conquer them once and for all. Crap.
I read that TV's Craig Ferguson had become a pilot to overcome his fear of flying. To that I say, Bullshit, Cheeky Monkey. Some fears are not overcome. They may be temporarily bested, but they are still there and there is no predicting when they will come back.
Bouldering seems a mix of hiking and rock climbing. In Joshua Tree, there are rock outcroppings that go quite high. Not shear cliff rock here, but big boulders arranged in artful compositions.
Think of the scene in Galaxy Quest where Tim Allen is fighting the Rock Monster.
In fact, I could structure an argument that Galaxy Quest is all about facing your fears and becoming a team. That would be very easy, so Reader, I leave it to you to do for yourself.
At Joshua Tree, I had two warning signals. I heeded them and pressed on. Climbing up some of these rocks was difficult, but I first felt really anxious at the very top of one. There did not seem to be enough room for everyone at the top, and the other side was a very quick drop off into oblivion. Cheryl and I held onto each other until we could make the climb down.
There we are huddled at the top (thanks Maria for the photo).
It was the final descent that did me in. We had scaled to the highest peak, a climb that was precarious, but not particularly difficult. I declined to make the final jump across a crevasse as two of our group did. The view was spectacular, and we were all very pleased with ourselves. I was the last in the line to head down, and right away I felt the second warning go off. I watched the others go back the way we came, and a gap that had seemed small on the way over was now practically a gorge going back. Cheryl and Franco talked me through it. Feeling fine, I continued down the rocks.
The next and last challenge was a nearly vertical descent. Here Cheryl and Franco approach it, with Gene below:
From where Gene is standing, it's another drop of about 100 feet.
It probably didn't help that I was the last in the group to make this descent. Or that I couldn't actually see how the others were doing it.
Geologists can explain how the boulders are cut through with harder rock seams (called "dikes" according to the Park Service). One of these seams formed a small shelf just below the rim of the rock. It looked a little like a horizontal staircase. Somehow, I was supposed to use this to get down.
My mind and body were once again working in perfect unison and telling me again: don't move, don't let go of the rock. Cheryl and Franco tried to talk me through it but I could not will my hands to move to the next safe spot nor my feet to lower to the next ledge. I was stuck. It seemed like forever and was probably three minutes.
Sean (who, I suppose, I should stop calling my "tormentor" and call my "teacher") was the first to go down the rock this way, and he bounded back up to help. He not only talked me through the moves, he managed to balance himself and use his own body to steady mine. I rested on him in order to move away from the boulder and down the shelf to the next solid spot.
Sean, My Teacher, who has no fear.
On the ride home, someone said, "you made it down, though, you conquered your fear."
Not really. I met my fear, recognized it, and yielded to it. I am, and remain, powerless when gripped by this enormous anxiety. In all three of these instances, I got through it with the help of others. I have not "conquered" my fear. It is still there and will, at some time, come back.
I don't know what I would have done if I had been alone on that rock. But then, I would never be there alone.
I will, however, still try new experiences that take me out of my "comfort zone." I will do so knowing that I could be faced with a similar situation. The support of friends, and certified professionals, will get me through.
