Sometime soon a book is coming out. The author and I were in a class together. I wrote a story. Doesn’t matter what it was on. Two weeks later she wrote an almost identical story.
I wasn’t supposed to think she stole from me but was “inspired by.” If being “inspired by” paid bills or garnered something I wouldn’t care. Maybe she did think of it on her own. But I would never hand in something almost identical to another person’s two weeks later. Now the story doesn’t belong to me but to her. I have no idea if it’s in the book or not. It was in the very first draft.
I stopped taking classes as I grew tired of teachers telling me after class how they would save my stuff for last as it was always interesting, and they loved reading my work so so much, etc. I was always the one who almost made it. Somebody else would.
I grew tired of that world. The world of New York where people all think a certain way. Problem is I don’t know how else to think. Or how to think as I don’t just look at the bottom line.
I have wants and needs also. But I’m supposed to smile and applaud when somebody else makes it and I can’t anymore.
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Wouldn’t it be nice if I figured out what the hell I’m doing? I saw a free Beach Boys concert without Brian but with Dean of Jan & so I’m kind of feeling like the Little Old Lady of Pasadena except I’m not really old, not little and not from Pasadena. I have only been there once actually.
I don’t usually feel lonely or alone. Ironically this struck after firming up plans that begin next week. Now I’m doubting myself. Wondering what I’m doing. Why am I here when the weather hasn’t exactly been anything to boast about except for Friday and Saturday and I had bronchitis and am scared that the extremely windy conditions are going to lead pollen straight to my nose and bronchial trachea.
It’s hard to admit loneliness when I have always been so independent but I have always had friends to run to. I’m writing about parts of my life that weren’t the best and do make me depressed but I’m getting paid to do this so…It’s as if non verbal learning disorder is a verboten subject.
It’s not Asperger’s and it’s not bi-polar so who cares? I do. I just didn’t want to be the face of it or the voice or whatever. It makes me problematic. I’m the person people love but just can’t hire. Except for this article and I do feel grateful about that.
Yes people contact me and ask if they can use a post for this and pay me, and they would love to use more. But uh my archives….I’m a compulsive cleaner–the disorder that NLVD or NLD brings had to go somewhere. It went into my archives. I had to teach myself everything. I was my own life coach and it’s not easy. I don’t dissolve into pity parties often. This isn’t one. This is what life’s like with a disorder few people know about, and nobody is going to give me points or a break for having overcome much as the disorder is so invisible. It only hurts me.
Do you have any idea what it’s like to be the one who almost makes it? What about my feelings? I don’t exist just to cheer others on though I love it when people I know make it. I want to be cheered on. I’m overly honest, I know and am breaking many rules by writing this post
What can anybody do? Banish me from New York to South Carolina?
This isn’t bitterness talking nor is it envy. It’s facts. I’m just a bit too much work and there is always somebody who might not be as talented or might be more, but can put together a perfect package.
I can’t even do a proper outline so I have to write a damn book before shopping it and I don’t want to spend my days and nights immersed in the worst times of my life when I could be listening to beach music in clubs.
I’m older than the person who wrote the book that’s coming out soon and have been telling that story for many many years. I want credit. Or I want to understand why I’m supposed to feel good about inspiring?
What’s in that for me? I’m sorry if this isn’t sportsman like but I have worked damn hard. I’m talented. I want also….And most of all I think a person should have the decency not to hand in a story two weeks after somebody else handed an almost identical one.
That made me feel as if I’m worthless. It was a slap in the face as if I was invisible and hadn’t read two weeks earlier. Only she counts. Push me to the side and pretend I don’t exist.
No this isn’t how Columbines begin. It’s how self-doubt festers and dreams die.
If you don’t know Jan’s story, it’s one of the most tragic in all rock history. “Dead man’s curve” is scarily prescient. Dean is 65 if a day and drop dead gorgeous. At least from a distance.
Thanks to the people who think Small Wars should be made into a novel. I can’t as I don’t find the main character empathetic. As I was compulsively writing it, I found myself screaming at her.
I like women with cojones. Some years ago I was going to visit my mother. It was rush hour and there were two trains five minutes or less apart. I took the later train as it was an express. Continue Reading »
Winter Soldier is Iraq Veterans against the war. Think every American is morally bound to help. My thanks to Wadena for showing me the way there. Continue Reading »
We’re having some problems getting this post to work. We don’t care.
My apartment’s going on sale today–the week that The New York Times officially called the Manhattan housing market not good. Some people, basically everybody we know, called us obsessive for renovating a perfectly nice apartment. Since the paper of record says you should renovate to sell, they call us foresighted.
Our host company had problems. We don’t know why the “iconic” pinup is gone. However….We have it back.
We’re too happy to have our archives to bear a grudge. It’s just that when we said we were going to shake up our life, we wanted our blog to be part of our new life.
We hadn’t realized Courting is our real home. As long as we have our blog we can live anywhere. Not true but it sounds good.
We lost some posts that talked about our very chaotic move. Briefly it took fourteen hours to get here. We arrived to a disaster. The townhouse next door had their water heater in the attic. It exploded. Our friend’s downstairs kitchen, dining room and living room floors had to be replaced.
Bobby our newest BFF the project manager said fixing this house was like “what’s that show?” “Extreme Home Makeover.” “Right, hon.”
Bobby accomplished in two days what took us four months to do to our apartment, and we didn’t have to constantly give him more money and tell him not to take out the recessed lighting in the kitchen as we like it and we wanted to focus on the things that bring in money–a reglazed bath tub, new paint, great sanded floors, new door knobs. We knew what to do and what not to do, but we only own the apartment.
Basically we spent four months being contractor to the contractor and totally appreciate professionals. We did bring in a professional but he too had his hand out constantly. We understand how high the cost of living is in New York and that people think if a person’s renovating to sell they will make millions. We know our apartment has limitations and won’t. Hence we wanted it to look as perfect as possible. We’re so happy to be out of the city of “gimme, gimme more.”
We did take our own furniture, rearrange and “staged” it amazingly, if we must say so ourselves. Our mother’s best friend, an interior designer, always told us we had the eye and whatever else is needed to be an interior designer. We didn’t think it intellectual enough and were scared of graphs. Now we could do the graphs on computer and think it a great occupation.
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We would like to remind people as it doesn’t seem to be talked about that in less than two weeks the US will have been in Iraq for five years. Five years too long.
If I had a countdown clock it would be counting down the hours until Wednesday morning. People keep saying “wow, you’re going to be living in America,” as if life outside of New York, Southern Florida or California requires a passport and shots. So many people have been doing big and little things for me, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude and happiness under the anxiety.
My sister has not just come to terms with it but seems to like the thought of the move.
In 1997, I was self employed. My health insurance premium was $347–found checks when going through files. It’s now over $1200 a month–not because I’m older or have any conditions as anybody can buy health insurance in NY who can afford to. I bought my apartment that year. The monthly charges were $535–now over $1200. Most of the increases happened after 9/11. Yet they say inflation is just beginning. Not in New York.
This all began to be real to me when I canceled my subscription to The New York Times.
This move to a place I didn’t know before last year couldn’t have been possible before I began to blog. I learned so much about people and this incredibly wonderful country that just needs a lot of fixing.
Lucia and I took Little Luce to this Simon & Garfunkel reunion concert when she was eight months old. Her father was scared that something bad would happen–but Lucia and I know Central Park. I don’t know if anything will be in my skin and bones as much as New York, but I’m going to look.
The first concert my sister and I went to was a Simon & Garfunkel concert in Lincoln Center. Our parents sat several rows away. It was horrible that they insisted on coming. I wasn’t going to admit knowing them nor would I be seen talking to them.
This has always been one of my favorite songs. It reminds of being the age Little Luce is now when life was one of infinite possibilities. I’m beginning to feel the possibilities again.
This next one is for the friends I saw last night and a few more. After 30 years, so far I think we’ll be sharing park benches somewhere when we’re 70. It has a bonus song with one of those seminal 60’s words
I will be commenting and posting more regularly once I’m a bit settled.
This is my first attempt at Writer’s Island. This weeks prompt is Second Chance.
As always I thank Bone for the words.
Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of the first attack on The Trade Center. I will never forget either attack. The fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq is quickly coming. We’re not honoring the dead by remaining in Iraq.
My printer is throwing a fit so I almost run to FedEx/Kinko’s on a very gentrified West 72nd Street. When it was just Kinko’s I used to feel I was in a Al Pacino movie, and would look for all the lonely crazy people. My cable was down more than it was up when I was a reporter and I thought it would be a fate worse than death not to have friends I could wake up at midnight to use their computer when I had just seen a movie and had a six AM deadline. I couldn’t imagine being in Kinko’s through the night. It seemed so transient.
I have had many second chances in life. It almost seems unfair to be constantly reinventing my careers. Same city–three apartments, same friends, but oh so many careers.
There is only one career I crave and I crave it so much I feel like a vampire sucking blood. Who am I to think I can make it as a writer? Lately I have been reading so many good blogs I think I’m not even a ripple.
On March 5, I will take a 90 minute plane ride to a new world for me.
90 minutes by plane but a world away. A new life. A new chance. I won’t be stressing about things costing more every day, or a woman yelling in Fairway:
You, you deserve to die.
I have no idea why she pointed to me and said that. Neither did the other people waiting on the long line. I could understand the man who screamed at me as I almost went to his check out counter instead of the one just across from it.
He told me that I owed him an apology. I didn’t think so, and I’m the former princess now queen of apologizes. I had already told him I was sorry. He wanted something more. Something neither I nor the other people in Fairway could have given him.
I accept people going crazy in Fairway. It’s built so that the aisles are too small and everything looks dirty though the fish is always ranked first in freshness, least in mercury, etc.
I know people who won’t shop there as they don’t want to be yelled at. They want to be distant from the fracas yet really all life in Manhattan is frazzled.I accept Fairway as a normal part of Upper West Side life.
When push comes to shove, and it does all the time there, do I have to accept it?
I write about Fairway too much as it’s the bane and justification of my existence.
The years immediately preceding and subsequent to 9/11 were the worst of my life. My mother was rapidly aging. She was the person I had always gone to for advice, for validation. She wasn’t at all demented but blind. People treated her as if she was demented. Sometimes they didn’t but she thought they did. It didn’t matter. I heard it all. I had no filter that separated her feelings from mine. I tried to consider her feelings. She tried to consider mine. Yet so many times we didn’t act considerate of each other.
I worked in a nursing home. Surrounded by old age I almost became old myself. I felt adrift and alienated from almost everybody. It should have been easy, for me, to find help to deal with my conflicted feelings. The professionals in the nursing home couldn’t understand how I could let my mother live alone.
I would quote them to them. “She has capability in all areas but sight.” They would tell me that if it were their mother they would insist she live in an assisted living facility or a nursing home. “But you’re the ones literally writing the book on the many types of capability. Don’t you understand, stubbornness? Vanity? The want to live an independent life? I can’t tell a woman with capabilty in almost all areas where to live” No, not in this case. She was blind. That she could distinguish medications by putting different sized rubber bands on the bottles–a home care agency test of cognizance–didn’t matter.
That she was sharp and mindful of all possible problems didn’t matter. Didn’t I know I was a bad daughter?
Therapists outside the nursing home would tell me I had to separate. I knew that but how? I didn’t live with my mother. There were five mandatory phone calls a day. If I didn’t call at exactly nine AM she would get sick to her stomach. They didn’t know what I could do. They just knew her dependence on me wasn’t healthy. I knew that also. They refused to believe I was also dependent. I seemed so strong. I stopped believing in therapy. I knew this wasn’t an easy problem but I needed support. I needed to feel that I was a worthy person.
Oh sweet irony. I had gone into this field to learn how adult children and parents could get along. I had gone into the field to look for new ways of housing when people became old. I had gone into it with many expectations that people didn’t want to consider then.
Now the news is filled with this problem. Then I felt so alone. After her death, shortly after 9/11 I felt guilt, sadness, despair. Nothing but time could heal this.
I became the person I hated. I became a person who screamed in Fairway. My gait is slightly off. It’s not noticeable except when I’m tired or my psyche is worn out. I would bump into people. They would scream. I would scream back.
The supposed 9/11 affect of people becoming nicer; the halo that was supposed to have surrounded this city; it bypassed me. I felt as if I had become a punching bag for everybody with any problem to dump on.
Later I was to realize that no matter how horrible the problem we have a responsibility to only let it out at the right times. That there were few right times then–that this was a city in deep mourning—I truly should have understood that. Yet my need to mourn my mother should have been acknowledged.
I was right in giving up the friends who told me to stop mourning after six days. But I made my other friends responsible for my happiness and that’s always wrong. I felt so sad and distant from the world that once seemed to belong to me.
It was my straight male friends, and one great girlfriend, who were there for me. I can never participate in straight male bashing. One was physically present whenever I truly needed somebody to cry to. He would drive me where I needed to go, and basically translate my language of despair and need to our friends.
Another knew how to make me laugh. He has known me most of my life and knows I would rather laugh than cry, and needed people who understood that. I hope that there is never another terrorist attack or Katrina type emergency. But if there is all people affected should be given counseling if they want it
I have moved past mourning my mother. Still I needed continuity. My city, the one constant in my life other than family and friends, was quickly changing into a city I no longer knew.
My best girlfriend would walk the streets with me and point out how many people bumped into me and yet I would be the one to apologize. That gave them license to yell at me. She pointed this out and pointed it out until I understood apologizes were unnecessary. Not everything in the world was my fault. I will always love her for that and much more.
The first time I was able to go into Fairway without feeling scared that I would blow up was my biggest victory in my adult life.
I came back to myself. I’m an improved version as I have gone through the eye of too many storms that hit back to back. I did come out of the funnels stronger.
I never yell in Fairway. Even this past Sunday when the store was wall to wall people, when I was told I deserved to die–something I had thought in the horrible years–even when the man thought my “sorry” wasn’t enough, I smiled.
I don’t want to use all my energy just getting through the day.
This past decade wasn’t all horrible. I watched two young girls turn into wonderful young women. I became closer to my true friends. I met many new people. I learned that America consists of more than the NorthEast Corridor, South Florida, and SoCal.
I learned that despite my disability, dyspraxia/non verbal learning disorder, I can move where ever I want to. I learned that I can take the best of me and make it better.
I have a chance, a true and planned chance at a new life. It hasn’t hit me yet. I don’t really understand that once I sell my apartment and buy something new, my expenses will be cut drastically. It hasn’t hit that when people in North Myrtle say something is crowded, I have to look–and never really find–the crowds.
It hasn’t hit that I will live in comfort with a dishwasher, washer/dryer and things other people take for granted. And it won’t cost more than $1200 a month above the purchase price.
Outside of New York I can focus on what’s important to me. I know the first six months or so will be difficult. I will be selling one apartment and looking for a townhouse to buy. A townhouse, a place with steps and room. It feels like a fairytale. It’s not
More importantly, New York, is the city of too many memories. I find myself reframing my mother’s final years. I wasn’t a bad daughter. I was a daughter who helped allow my mother to live her final years with the dignity she so badly wanted. Somehow it’s easier to understand that outside of New York.
New York was my dream city in my 20’s and 30’s. I have changed. New York has changed. Change is good. Change keeps cities thriving and people growing. New York has a chance to remake it into the model international city. I have a chance to devote my time to my passions, and I have many.
Really I’m just a simple girl from Long Island gone country.
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I can’t comment right now so don’t feel the need to. ..
Doug, my dawg of wonderful colors is on vacation. But he left an interactive post to help me design my new house. So help me please!!!
This is long and maybe a bit verbose but my heart is bursting. I forgot to say my apartment’s 600 square feet. Everything I did was with tricks and gives an illusion…
In Manhattan it’s always been about real estate and always will be about it. A good apartment with that intangible “wow” factor brings up the apartment’s worth immensely. Today’s consumer might be perfectly prepared on paper, but falling in love is falling in love whether with a person or an apartment.
*Actually I met them yesterday.
Ten years, seven and a half a months ago, on my birthday, I circled the ad that led to the first apartment I found that said to me: WOW, I HAVE TO OWN THIS. Continue Reading »
I found this prompt (see bottom after reading post) on Lissa’s blog It’s not edited, and I had many interruptions so I’m not sure how long it took–will always set that microwave clock
I go out walking, after midnight
Out in the moonlight
Just like we used to do
I’m always walking, after midnight
Searching for you
Dani needed one break. Just one little break. People had been saying she could sing like Patsy ever since she could remember. They passed the hat around at the Millersville Saloon & Grill every Friday night. On a payday Friday she would take home $100 to $150. The next Friday $35-$50 if she was lucky.
Of course Millersville was in Coal County PA, not Texas or Nashville or anywhere near where record company people lived. Mountain View was hot. Lots of New Yorker’s were buying houses in and around it, but nobody came near Millersville or Desolateville as Dani and her friends called it.
I walk for miles, along the hyihway
Well that’s just my way
Of saying I love you
I’m always walking after midnight
Searching for you
Dani thought about that as she walked around Mountain View one muggy Tuesday in August. She’d been to every restaurant and bar in town and nobody needed a singer. She was so tired of being a clerk at The Millersville Notion Shop, a kind of low class five and dime. Her boss made her open on Saturdays knowing that she didn’t get home until after three AM on Friday night/Saturday mornings. “Keeps you from drinking too hard,” Wanda her boss would say. Dani was a two beer at max girl but she couldn’t afford to open her mouth to Wanda. Wanda had never forgiven her for winning “best looking” “best voice” and “most popular girl” back in high school. Wanda hadn’t ben nominated for anything.
I stop to see a weeping willow
Crying on his pillow
Maybe he’s crying for me
And as the skies turn gloomy
Night winds whisper to me
I’m lonesome as I can be
Dani felt defeated. She wasn’t really aware of her surroundings. Mountain View was pretty as a picture, enough films were made here, but come on, it wasn’t real. Wanda owned another store here. She was determined to be Coal County’s best known female.
Dani wasn’t listening at first. Why was that man singing “Walking after Midnight?” Shit, he was singing along with her. “Oh no,” she heard herself saying, “I didn’t mean to be singing out loud.”
The man smiled. She thought she recognized him but he couldn’t be Jay Larsen, American Idol break out star. “You should be singing everywhere all the time. You have an amazing voice.”
How Dani was discovered became a favorite feel good tabloid story. If she hadn’t been unconsciously singing out loud, she wouldn’t be Dani Freeman-Larsen, the anti Britney.
Wanda wanted to tell people that Dani was a no good drunk, former high school bad girl who happened to get lucky but as Dani helped her expand her business….
Your character was lost in her own thoughts. When she snaps back to reality, she realizes she was singing out loud. Unfortunately, she wasn’t somewhere private. How embarrassing… Take it from there.
It’s rabbit rabbit day–the first day of the month and the Friday before the superbowl. I wanted to write something feel good.
A good blogger to me is somebody who moderates comments, is constantly reading new blogs, and commenting. I just don’t have the time or mental energy for that. Not now. I need to write and to write I begin blogs. I have a few private ones and one not so secret one.
Courting isn’t going on hiatus. I will be writing and moderating comments but I won’t be commenting until I’m in a different space. I mean that physically. Actually I go through this every few months. I’m obsessed with blogging and admire bloggers who never tire of commenting. I’m not comment crazy and enjoy reading blogs without commenting often but then I’m called a lurker. I don’t understand why “reader” isn’t acceptable and people can’t be happy with people reading their blogs without commenting at times.
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The three most exciting parts of the State of the Union address to me where:
3) Looking at men’s ties–and I don’t have a large TV or LCD or plasma
2) Watching Ted Kennedy sleep–for one of the few times in my life I agreed completely with David Brooks–on my birthday, or the next day in 1969, he knew he could never become President so he focused on becoming a great senator
1) Watching Nancy Pelosi try to find a proper facial expression–she went through every fake smile I know
CAN YOU SAY PORK BARREL? I ADMIT I KEPT FALLING ASLEEP BUT I WOULD WAKE TO HEAR BUSH TALK AGAIN AND AGAIN ABOUT ENDING OR DRASTICALLY REDUCING EAR MARKED RESOURCES.
YES WORLD, THE SAME MAN WHO SENT NEW YORK’S POST 9/11 AIDE TO WYOMING AS THEY NEEDED IT SO MUCH MORE. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I can no longer afford to live in New York a city that faces a huge deficit–a city that looks all sparkly on the outside but–if it weren’t for private conservatories, Wall Street, tourism and people like me who are paying huge moving taxes–New York would already be in worse shape than it was during the fabled bad days.
Yes we got the aide. Three years late. I still don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe America needed to be taken down a notch. To be humbled. But we deserved a president who gave a damn. The Hillary of the “misguided” health reform did. This Hillary, i’m not sure about. I am sure that Barack Obama does.
I'm Pia Savage. Just a writer with a blog title few people truly get. I suppose my destiny has taken me from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Myrtle Beach as I barely heard of it eleven months ago. My email is Pia(dot)talks@gmail(dot)com.
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