Let the spiders bite (real not bots)

I would be the person to begin a “new” blog with a going away post. Actually that’s in a couple of days–I’m fending off a bronchial infection.

I’m sitting on my upper deck listening to Christmas Blues and wondering what people care to read in a blog. Really I don’t care. I just like to write. But blogging’s become so niche-driven and this blog’s always been a patchwork.

I know too much about anxiety and depression not because of a chemical disorder but because of a slight neurological disorder that I write about elsewhere. If I were too be very honest I would say that I’m tired of disorders but I think that’s very un-PC.

I know too much about many subjects others write more passionately about or have written about more recently. In the blogosphere it’s not who you were once but who you are at this exact second. Actually I don’t think that’s the worst thing in the world but I’m so tired of reading about subjects as if they’ve just been discovered. Yeah and the earth was flat until an hour ago.

In my 40’s–not yet 20 years ago I went to grad school to learn about aging. I wanted to learn about alternative living arrangements; how to stay vital; how to grow old without having children who could help you–stuff like that. I have to say that I’m used to being laughed at. So I ended up with a grad degree and a license that I put to good use–sometimes.

Cliche of cliches–one incredibly gorgeous September day everything did change. Here’s where you begin to hate me for I will say that we who lived in New York then did own that day. Or rather it owned us.

The day itself is imprinted in my brain. Though the image of Broadway, empty of traffic, with fighter jets overhead–was that real or was it a truly bad movie I couldn’t stop watching?

The day itself seems like forever ago. But everything that happened afterward in my life was directly or indirectly caused by that day.

My mother died suddenly almost exactly a month later. Finding blogging and being able to blog about her death saved me. It gave me a new life, a new direction, and a new address–900 miles away from the Upper West Side of Manhattan in a place I had barely heard of.

And so I live in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a life long liberal and a mostly non-practicing Jew who will always be proud of being Jewish. There’s this thing called “Hitler’s Law,” he made sure that our parents, even our parents who lived in America, could never deny their roots. And they taught us, their children, to be American yet stand just a bit apart. And we taught the next generation to wear their Jewish roots proudly—to have the most outlandish Bar and Bat Mitzvah’s possible yet fit seamlessly into America.

I’m going to celebrate Christmas and the New Year with a bunch of Puerto Rican descended lapsed Catholics. Not being religious seems to be much simpler for them and yet–they have Christmas trees, lights and all the stuff I used to envy growing up. For the eight nights of Chanakuah never seemed to equal one night and one day of Christmas.  The only present I remember getting–the big one–was a light opera version of Yankee Doodle Dandy, my favorite movie. But not that version. I cried. And later put it to good use when it became the official joint rolling album.

Please don’t think my parents were bad present givers. They gave great ones. A fur coat (nutria–swamp rat–don’t get crazed) for my 25th birthday. That my birthday was in July and I got the coat in January–well really, did I need it in July?

In New York? A city so hot in summer steam rises off the pavements and the brick of the buildings. The long hot summers of the South are nothing compared to a week long heat spell in New York. (Oh read my old posts where I described New York heat spells so perfectly even I began to sweat.)

I know. I know. This isn’t what a blog post is supposed to be. A blog post is supposed to have a beginning, middle and end. It’s supposed to be about something–and damn-it should be about something worthy not ruminations.

Who made that law? Who said that blogging is supposed to be anything but what the blogger wants it to be?

I write many worthy posts. Keep them short and add an image. But they don’t satisfy the writer in me. Now I’m shaking the cobwebs out of the small creative section of my most mangled brain–have looked at so many pictures of brains with extra and/or less white matter in them in the past six years that I could probably draw a brain.

And I can’t draw anything but anorexic girls with great hair and adorable clothes. I began drawing them before anybody heard of anorexia or big hair or mini-dresses. I don’t get it either but my sister will verify this.

I have a book to finish. And the only way I can keep it on track is if I let the spiders bite here. So I leave you with that image.