GARDENING AND LETTING GO
I spent the afternoon with Cathy and Susan, helping them plant perennials in the gardens around their front walkway. It was such a pleasant way to spend the afternoon . . . digging holes in the dirt, tenderly snugging in Impatiens, Begonias, and Indian Paintbrush. I always think that perhaps I’ll weed out and plant in the strip along my front porch, but I’ve never actually followed through. This gardening by proxy scenario seems like a good solution to the (typical) ambivalence of my combined desire and inertia.
Susan and I are collaborating on a paper on The L-Word, which I’m very excited about . . . although there are some days when I feel like way too much of a moron to be an effective scholarly collaborateur. (I prefer the eur ending to plain old “collaborator” which seems rather clunky and dull . . . eur is more interesting, like saboteur, you know?) But Susan (who, by the way, co-edited the first ever Coming Out Stories) is an exceedingly gifted and generous scholar, and seems altogether oblivious to (what seems to me to be) my rather glaring Moronic Tendencies.
I’m listening obsessively to The Butchies on my (recently aquired and deliciously lime green) iPod mini, and finding complicated and ingenious ways to avoid writing. Strangely, I’m right behind the 8-ball on the novella I’ve been working on, but something seems to be holding me back. Part of it, of course, might be that I’m worried I’ll finish the novella and find that it’s utter crap, but that’s nothing unusual . . . I think it’s something a little bit different. It’s almost as if I don’t want to let go of the story and the characters just yet . . . it’s more like I’m savoring it . . . as if I want to stay inside that place, that world I made, for a little longer. Separation anxiety, I suppose. But sooner or later . . . I’ll have to let go.
RUNNING BRUSH : 