Writing about writing about myself

So I realize that I've spent most of the past week writing about the perils of writing about myself, thereby exponentially upping my level of self-involvement from the zenith I thought I'd reached when I was merely writing about myself. Now I am writing about writing about myself, which is like writing about myself to the second power. And I can only foresee things getting worse, like maybe next year I'll be looking back and writing about this phase of my creative development (or stagnation, or regression; it's yet to be determined), and then I'll be writing about writing about writing about myself, which is a sentence that even Gertrude Stein would look at and be like, wha? And you know, I think there are only so many levels of metacommentary one can engage in before it stops being meta and starts being micro; it's like that Escher painting of the staircases that go both up and down at the same time -- you keep climbing the levels and getting deeper into yourself. Ergo, this post has officially ceased to make any sense at all.

Alice B. Toklas brownie, anyone?

Out and about

The library reading was really fun last night -- special thanks to Louis Parascandola for having me there, and to Anne Elliott, Chuck Funk, Jen Glick, luckydave, Rosie Ngo, Eryn Loeb, and Daniel Silverman for coming out. It was an eclectic crowd, to say the least -- as Bill noted, many audience members came equipped with large crinkly plastic bags full of random belongings. A gentleman in his eighties struck up a conversation with me before the reading; apparently, he was married for 45 years to the love of his life, and they had, he said, "a utopian marriage." She's since passed, so he spends a lot of time trying to keep active, coming to things like library readings and such. He's a rich man, he told me; he came back from the war in '41 and bought a house in Bensonhurst through the GI Bill; he sold it for a profit, then bought another, and another, and so on. But he's not looking to get married again, not that I was petitioning him. He misses his wife, he said, but he's a happy person. He fell asleep about two minutes into my reading. A woman named Dolores, who wore big gold earrings proclaiming her name, raised her hand during the Q and A and started telling the dramatic and unfortunate story of her own homelessness -- no question seemed to be forthcoming, so I let her speak for a while, then said, "Sounds like we have another memoir in progress here; I hope you'll write your story down to share with others. Any other questions?"

I have some good public appearances coming up, not all of which are actually open to the public. I'm looking forward to Talkingstick on Friday the 9th at the Rubin Museum -- I'll probably tell the latest Nextbook story, "Magic Nail," unless I'm struck by inspiration sometime in the next nine days. I'm also looking forward to leading a class in Memoir Writing at a public high school in Brooklyn next week. Then on the 14th, Vanity Fair is throwing a pre-publication party for the book at a store that sells handbags -- I guess the reasoning is that people who want to read about homeless kids also want to buy fancy purses. I couldn't be more flattered and excited to be moving in such hoity and toity circles.

So that's out, now here's about:

I heard from one of the girls in GIRLBOMB this weekend, someone I lived with in the group home, someone I'd been Googling for years, hoping to find, with no luck. She's a successful real estate agent now, which is wonderful news; I always adored her and hoped for the best for her. She said she hadn't thought about those times in years (really? I wondered. How did she manage that?), and that reading the book brought back a flood of memories, but it was a flood full of hospital waste. Sorry about that, I said. Not everybody wants to dredge up the past. Also, if you're looking for a book about actual dirty needles, I just wrote one.

I also went to a wake for my friend's mom this weekend. I'm sorry, I said to the dead woman as I knelt before her casket, I'm sorry you didn't have more of a chance in life to be happy. Sorry you never caught a break. I hope you know that your daughter is much beloved, and that she's going to be looked after; she's going to have a happy life. I hope that will give you some peace. Selfishly, it made me think of my own mom, and how much happiness and peace I wish for her. How much I do not look forward to kneeling before her casket.

Finally, I want to leave one of those coded messages I wasn't going to leave on my blog anymore. The message is: We are all full up with crazy over here. So if crazy is what you're selling, you're going to have to peddle it elsewhere. Seriously, my fucking in-box looks like the triage center at Bellevue. And I know that's because I ask for it, what with the co-dependence and the let-me-help-you and the books about how crazy I've been at times in my life. But now I'm asking it to stop. Universe, please tell the trainwrecks and the solipsists and the users and the drama queens that I am no longer running the Janice Erlbaum Free Clinic for the Monotonously Self-Destructive. And please let it be true this time.

Tonight!

Join me tonight at 6:30 at the Mid-Manhattan Library on 40th Street and 5th Avenue for a reading and discussion of my new book, HAVE YOU FOUND HER. I'll be thoroughly grateful to see you!

The privacy-honesty thing again

I keep trying to write about my relationship with the waitress at the diner down the block, a relationship from which I derive real comfort and inspiration, not to mention eggs and toast. But lately this thing has been happening where I like someone so much that I don't want to write about them; I want to keep them to myself. I don't want to flatten them between two glass slides, pin them like butterflies to a canvas. I want them to stay real people. Not to mention, did she ask to be written about? No, she didn't, though I suspect she wouldn't be disinclined if I asked her permission. And I've certainly written about people without their permission before, as most writers have -- it's called "writing."

I was in a terrible mood when I posted the other day, the day I wrote something like, "I'm not going to talk about how angry I am," a sentence which proves itself untrue in the last four words. How angry I was! I had to sit down and tell the internet right away. It didn't help, and now I have this stupid post on the record, where I call unspecified people "malicious idiots," except I said I'm not calling them that, so I'm not touching you, nanny nanny boo boo!

This is going to sound ridiculously post-modern, but I don't know how to not write about myself. I don't want to see my life as fodder; not everything is fair game anymore. I don't want to use other people for material, despite years of doing just that, despite the fact that every story has to have characters in it, which means you're by god writing about someone. I know I'm a few years too late for some people, who would have been delighted had I chosen not to use them for material -- I'm sorry, folks; that's just how much you meant to me.

So how do you write, when you don't want to expose yourself anymore, when you don't want to tell the juicy stories that aren't necessarily yours? What do you post on your blog? What do you tell people when they ask what's new?

"Just...living, I guess."

Lionel! Shriver!

You know how it's become part of the blog-o-trope to separate. words. with periods., to underscore one's deadpan seriousness about a subject? Well, I am so crazy about Lionel Shriver these days, when I write about her, I have to separate! the words! with exclamation points! I read The Post-Birthday World this summer and raved about it to every one of my friends and colleagues; even as I was reading it, I would put it down and shake my fists in frustration -- "Augh! This book is so fucking good! Augh!" Right now I'm in the middle of We Need to Talk About Kevin, and I'm torn between wanting to say forget everything and lock the door to my office and read it the rest of the way through, and wanting to stop reading it immediately so there's always more of it to read. I was carrying the book at Happy Endings the other night, and three people said to me, "Loved that book." I can't stand how profound, insightful, well-worded, and suspenseful these books are; how elevated her language is, how emotionally honest her observations about human behavior are. Augh! Lionel! Shriver!

The truth.

I told myself that, this time around, I wasn't going to be so goddamn honest on my blog. I wasn't going to say things that invaded my own privacy, or my family's; I wasn't going to use this blog to say things to people that I either needed to say in person, or not at all. I wasn't going to say things that might have negative professional repercussions for me. I was going to keep it light. Which is probably why, every time I go to post, I wind up typing and erasing, typing and erasing.

Because seriously, I would rather be honest. I would rather tell you all about who's pissing me the fuck off lately, and how; I'd rather complain to you about the behind-the-scenes hardships we've been dealing with these past few months. I'd rather bitch about the hard work I don't want to do, the smile I don't want to force, the malicious idiots who I sometimes have to deal with, and how hard it is to keep my head above the fray.

But it's good for me to keep up a front; it's necessary protection. It's an exercise in gratitude, in positive thinking. I should reflect happiness and good things, because my life is essentially wonderful, despite the frustration and sadness and fear to which we're all subject. Just being alive, and being free from overwhelming physical or mental disability, is a profound gift; the extent to which I'm able to enjoy my life, a life I used to want to end sometimes, is amazing. Emphasizing the good stuff instead of wallowing in what's wrong is my way of saying thank you, keep it coming. People want to hear about the darkness -- well, there's plenty of darkness to go around right now. I'm working hard over here to keep it light. It's not always easy, and I'll probably slip here and there -- bitch, complain, malign, or whine. But in hiding these things, I'm trying to be more honest, not less. And that's the truth.

Me, the movie

So I just read that my new biffle Amy Cohen's book, The Late Bloomer's Revolution, is being made into a movie, to be produced by Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, with star Sarah Jessica Parker. Which is perfect, except for the fact that Amy is actually way cuter than SJP. But it got me to thinking -- who's going to play me in the movie of Have You Found Her?

Of course, the first choice is Lauren Ambrose. She's a great actress -- I've loved her since Can't Hardly Wait -- and completely adorable. She would be perfect in the role of a co-dependent pothead with mommy issues, as we saw when she was on Six Feet Under; plus, she sounds really sane in interviews. Sadly, she doesn't seem to roll out of bed for anybody but Shakespeare these days. Next.

Okay, then what about Chloe Sevigny? She's a hell of an actress, too, and boiling hot right now. She grew up in the city, and got her start in Kids, a movie I practically lived; she's already got a track record playing people like me. Like Ambrose, she's a few years younger than me, but it'll take a few years to get this thing into production, and anyway, I look really young. Right?

Of course, Chlo-Chlo's pretty busy these days with Big Love and everything. So what about Michelle Williams, suggested Amanda. And I was like, Ooh! You really think I'm that cute? And Amanda was like, totes. Which is why we're biffles. But Michelle just had an Oscar nom in '06, and a baby, and a high profile break up -- she's probably busy too. So who else do we got.

Uhhhh...Thora Birch. Remember her? The chick from American Beauty who wasn't Mena Suvari? Whatever happened to Thora Birch, and her giant breasts? She was great in Ghost World. And she's got that big old forehead -- perfect for emoting Erlbaumian levels of craziness.

But really, could there ever be any other choice than Kathy Griffin? Dead. Ringer. Am I right?

Upcoming readings

Ahem! I'll be reading from and discussing my upcoming book, Have You Found Her, at the Mid-Manhattan Library next Monday, for an hour, thank you.

Monday, October 29, 6:30 p.m., free
Mid-Manhattan Library, Fifth Avenue and 40th Street

Me, all me, just me, for a long time. Then a Q & A. With me.

Also, Friday, November 9, 8:30, free
Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, West 17th Street at Seventh Avenue

I'll be at Talkingstick, a storytelling show based on artwork and artifacts in the Rubin Museum. With Rick Patrick, Master Lee, and the docents of the museum. A great opportunity to see this beautiful museum, and hear some art at the same time. Multi-tasking, sort of.

I am wearing my glasses right now.

I caught a look at myself in a department store mirror this weekend. Later, I wrote, I looked like every anxious, blowdried, fortyish woman in there, squinting at everything suspiciously, picking up shoes and frowning at what it says on their soles. Flicking our eyes over each other, grading each others' efforts to be cute and youthful without being pathetic. It's like, Jesus -- smile, relax.

I gave in and got myself glasses a year and a half ago, then immediately stopped wearing them because I thought they made me look old. Then this weekend I saw the line between my eyebrows. I saw the tight, dark jeans I paid too much for, the slight post-vacation bulge above the low-cut waist. Not cute, I graded. Not even with poor vision. Harsh.

Because I was on the first floor, I was surrounded by rows of signs, Reduce the signs of aging. I thought, Well, reduce the number of signs about the signs of aging, and maybe we won't age so quickly!

Or maybe we'll grow up, and stop resisting it.

Recent read: Amy Cohen

Just read Amy Cohen's new memoir, The Late Bloomer's Revolution, and loved it -- loved her. I started the book, and laughed at the very first paragraph:

"I grew up thinking my mother had the answer to everything. Watch any black-and-white film and she always knew some obscure fact about an actor with one line. 'See the fishmonger behind the ox, the one who's yelling, "Slay the hunchback!" she'd say. 'His name was Skids Monroe. He came out of the Yiddish theater and was tragically maimed in a Ferris wheel accident.'"

A few pages later, her beloved mother is half-paralyzed from a stroke, the result of the brain cancer that will soon lead to her death, and she's telling Amy that she wants Amy's father to meet someone new after she dies. And I have tears in my eyes.

On the very next page, I'm laughing again, as her dry cleaner gasps at the facial rash she's developed after dealing with her mother's death, the subsequent breakup of her relationship with the man she thought she was going to marry, and losing her job unexpectedly -- "Oh God!...You burn in grease fire?"

That's the way it kept going with this book: laughing on one page, tearing up or wincing or cheering on the next, as Amy, at 35, undergoes a not-yet-mid-but-definitely-not-beginning-anymore life crisis, one that will be especially relatable to anyone with an audible biological clock. She goes through trial after trial -- disappointment, abandonment, embarrassment -- worrying the whole time that life will never get better.

Not to ruin the ending or anything, but it does. Which is the real joy of the book: watching someone deal with emotional pain and come out stronger for it, rather than weaker. It's especially gratifying to watch it happen for someone as likeable, honest, and full of humility and love as Amy is. Her blooming is a beautiful thing. Highly recommended.