An infamous, immodest cunt

There are a zillion things I wanted to blog about. Al Hirschfeld died. The EPA cover-up of the dangers of living at Ground Zero. Friends I’m worried about because they don’t realize how special or beautiful or talented they are.

I’m just too muddled in my thinking and any eloquence I once had has deserted me, like a rat leaving a sinking ship. Makes me wonder what it knows that I don’t.

The other day, a fantastically talented woman who thinks I’m the bee’s knees said " I am sorry this journal has become more superficial". I said to her: "Oh, my talented darling. Who dares question why you do what you do? I don't think your site is superficial at all. I often stay away for lengths of time because your talent and the beauty within these pages is sometimes too much to bear...too good, too beautiful, and it makes me realize what a hack I will always be. a clever hack, but a hack nonetheless. Bobbi, you do with it what you want. One day, we're going to be buying your stuff in bookstores and art galleries".

This woman is easily and beyond all question the most talented woman I have ever seen on the net. She and annette would get along really well, I think. They both have the same incredible eye for color and composition and irony. Bobbi is so talented, so truly, sublimely, unquestionably talented that she makes you a better writer JUST because she bothers to read you, but you know how she responded? She said: " if ever you find my stuff in those places, it will be some kind of an afterlife joke on me, i'm sure. i think i am destined to be an office drone, not artist. no marketing skills whatsoever. oh well."

It seems to me that it's a uniquely feminine trait that we're so willing to push aside any notion that we're special or unique or gifted. Men are raised to be confident, women modest. A man who is modest is thought a pussy faggot. A woman who is confident a bitchy cunt. I fully expect Bobbi one day to be rich and famous and much imitated. I am destined to be infamous. If I stay out of jail, I will eventually be published and my writing will be mistaken for and hailed as the new feminist manifesto, misandry to the nth degree.

Having said all that, I was reminded again this weekend what a true hack I will always be. A clever hack, but a hack. I’m currently reading ‘The Hours’ and I am delighted with the way these sparkling metaphors seem always at the author’s fingertips:

"The vestibule door opens onto a June morning so fine and scrubbed Clarissa pauses at the threshold as she would at the edge of a pool, watching the turquoise water lapping at the times, the liquid nets of sun wavering in the blue depths. As if standing at the edge of a pool she delays for a moment the plunge, the quick membrane of chill, the plain shock of immersion . . . "

That passage is so perfectly clear in its imagery. I will never have metaphors like that at my fingertips. For me, finding a good metaphor is always luck. Most often it’s an accident. My metaphors do not dance at my fingertips. No liquid nets of sunshine in pools for me. My metaphors and ideas are more like those idiot octagons in a Magic Eight Ball. You ask your question and turn the ball hoping to find the answer but more often than not all you get is that little octagon bobbing in and out of view. You have to shake it again and again to get in to come fully enough into focus to make out whether or not your science teacher really, truly, only loves you. I think my example, my life, my experiences offer the same hopeful prophecy as that magic octagon. I think that's why people come back.

Is that good?