New

I am so blown away by the Obama inauguration. Bush is REALLY GONE! It's been eight years of,,,well, I can't really say this on a blog my students and friends read.

I have ANOTHER manuscript request, this time at the Irene Goodman agency in New York. I have not heard from the Harvey Klinger agency yet, either. I'm not nervous, just businesslike about the whole thing. At least I'm starting to get hopeful that I have a viable book.

Anyway, off to dance class.

Facing the Dream

--warning--slightly graphic--do not read if you get upset at scary dreams


I dreamed last night that Mr. Strega and I went into my sister's apartment to witness the immediate aftermath of her death, and I saw her blood-soaked clothing all over the floor (part of her death in the "real" world involved a hemhorrage). Her phone was buried under old clothes and off the hook, and her apartment was in the kind of disarray someone might leave if they have to go out suddenly,expecting to be back later. We were frightened in the dream and cleaned up the mess. I wandered to a set of revolving mirrors, out of which my sister stepped. She told me she wanted me to live in her apartment, and I told her I couldn't, that I didn't like the city she lived in. She and I spent the time locking doors against "bad people" and trying to figure out where she could plant a garden. She told me she had already planted a flower called schizianthus (which later I found out is called "butterfly flower"--in many cultures, butterflies are thought to be the souls of the dead).

I woke to a state of near-hysteria from this dream, which had an overlay of strangeness and terror that I could not understand, though seeing my lost sister was not scary.

I know in "real" life that my sister got in her car and drove herself to the hospital as she began to have symptoms, rather than call an ambulance. I always wonder what her apartment looked like after she left that night--she must have fully expected to come back there, and she never did. I must have needed the catharsis of this dream, but I am not sure I needed the emotional ratlling for the rest of the day, and well into this evening!

On George Bush and Parallel Universes

(Sigh)--if only we lived in the safe, secure parallel universe that George Bush seems to think he inhabits and which he described tonight as he made his farewell speech. What America was he talking about? Certainly not the one I see around me, with crime on the rise. people losing their homes, and with our libraries and even the neighborhood swimming pool on the budgetary chopping block, and that's the very least of it.

I think Dubya should have said, "Thank you, America, for letting me and my folks wiretap your phones, read your emails, spy on the very books you take out from the library. I'm proud to say we've solved our energy crisis by foreclosing on your homes, so you don't have to use lightbulbs or appliances in them anymore. Think of the kilowatt hours I've saved you! And, hey, why do you need health care anyway in this era of global warming--do you REALLY want to live long enough to see the results of catastrophic climate change? My cohorts and I have stolen an election, ransacked your wallets, put many of you into the ranks of the unemployed, mortgaged your children's futures, created an atmosphere of oppressive fear and tension, killed thousands of people in our wars, and left you with a national debt the size of the whole Himalayan range. I'm outta here, America! Yee haw! Mission Accomplished!"

I feel that Bush's speech reflects an attitude whose time is past--and I hope Obama can unify the country in hope and leadership. Maybe the next four years will be like that plane which landed in the Hudson River today--it looked scary and everyone thought we were going to crash, but we glided to a place of safety and in the end, everyone was fine--we all helped each other and not one person was lost.

I Don't Go To Bed Until...

... I write and send five queries, until I've reached 20 queries this week (I query in 20-agent batches).

Jenny Bent of Trident Media Group (my first manuscript request), passed on the book, but had great praise for me, calling me a "talented writer" (this woman has had 16 NYTimes bestsellers, so I was very appreciative of that) and praising the book's storyline, but the descriptive prose was not for her. I wasn't disappointed, but instead was very appreciative that she had taken a serious look at it. I had gotten a manuscript request from another agent just a day or so before the email from Jenny, so it's not like weeks and weeks pass before someone else wants to look at it. I am sure I will have the right representation when it is the right time for me. In the meantime, I keep sending the queries out. Doing this in incremental batches feels much easier to me. Before I go back to work at the end of the month, I will have turned to doing a bunch of mail queries as well.

So it goes. I am glad to be doing this--though I have to say that email querying is a little bit addictive!

Another Manuscript Request!

Another agent has requested to look at the full manuscript, this time at the Harvey Klinger agency in New York. Yay!

My formerly flooded office is now in the process of being set to rights. The only residual effect is a slighlty sticky desk drawer. There is not even that nasty "wet carpet smell" which I so feared would happen.

Involved

I've been pondering a situation on the periphery of my life lately, the doings of a person in my "exercise" life whose behavior has--I suspect completely inadvertantly-- caused a sort of emotional vortex, the result of which I don't know yet--it could be positive, negative, or a tangle of both things. The results have little to do with my own personal life, yet I've been dwelling on it so much that I have neglected good things in the last two days, such as how gorgeous the moonlight looked tonight on the branches of winter trees.

It's so easy to get caught up in drama and neglect the center of my own life. The truth is, I do get perplexed by behaviors and some part of me, perhaps the writer part, just simply wants to figure out why someone is doing something. Still, I can spend an inordinate amount of time on that when what I REALLY need to do is detach and take stock of my own life. In this situation, I could choose to do nothing right now and see how things unfold; I could choose to take a hiatus; I could walk away and find another venue. I won't make any decision without breathing, taking time, asking for guidance from my Higher Power, even exercising gratitude for what has been given, even if things initially look as if there could be no gratitude at all applied to it. Sometimes in life, I've found that the gratitude lies in simply saying, "Thank You for opening my eyes to what seems to be the reality of this situation."

And that's all for tonight--gratitude and silver light on cold white branches.

2009

It has been quite a year for me, to say the least. As all my readers here know, I lost my mother, sister, and two close friends, many difficult losses starting 2007. I also had a miscarriage in June 2007, which was very difficult for me and about which I haven't really wanted to write much, except in my journaling. At my age, a surprise pregnancy seemed a miracle and it was profoundly sad for me to experience its loss.

Life does bring people down very difficult roads. I would not really want to live again the difficult parts of the last couple of years. I do feel that it has been one of the most deeply spiritual times of my life, when I have felt so close to unseen worlds and people who have passed beyond this life. Still, it has really hollowed me out. I am trying to be gentle with myself during this break, and plan to not teach summer school this year so that I can have some time to re-gather my thoughts and creativity.

I do feel that the new year is going to bring hope and light to this troubled country. I feel heartened by Obama's strength and resolve already to help our nation, and certainly positive change is always something wonderful to behold.

I've no New Year's Resolutions--I never make them--but perhaps being kinder to myself might be on the agenda!