Weather, Politics, Writing

Seasons: Sunday was late spring with 78 degrees and balm for the soul. Fleur and I spread mulch on all but two gardens (which F. created, no landscapers here). To the tune of 56, 3 cubic feet each, bags of somtimes half frozen mulch. Place looks fantastic. The robins and the kildees rode the warm air and awakening insects at least this far north to be freaked out by a fresh snow of 4" to 12" around here. Poor birds. And the mockingbirds are chasing them around to boot. Also, winter wins, at least, I'm tired of every single of one of the wool sweaters I almost never wore in Texas. But, I am going sledding and building some snowpeople (if the snow is still sticky).

Guests: the wife of one of Hemingway's best pals is staying with us for a few days. Her brother-in-law is in the hospital. The only problem with this is that she is one of those people who cannot Not Talk. Y'all know how I feel about that. Sigh. A small thing to help her support her family.

Politics: Sen. Clinton has hinted at a shared ticket with Sen. Obama. Might be machiavelian shenannigans, might be a fucking great idea!!!! I wouldn't care who's on top of the ticket (though, one can settle that by totalling the popular vote), but I can say this: if Obama were Prez, the racist fuckwits probably wouldn't try to kill him because then there would be Clinton -- white and black women and people of color would ALL get their historical sea change and not have to hem and haw over gender or race justice movements, a problem nicely addressed by several feminists in The Nation just now -- we would have two (or three, or four? Michelle is no slouch) whip smart people in the Executive Branch who would do good things and, I think, create a situation in which the Boomers and Xers work together (Obama not quite being an Xer but lots of us and lots Millenials are voting for him) and maybe do some longer term thinking (I salivate at the possibilities for the line up of advisors and Secretaries of This and That) -- and those white men who just can't vote for a woman for any number of wholly emotional and irrational reasons would get their sexist commupence! The general election would be the most interesting, maybe even the most particapatory in, like, ev-er. Quite a test of the country's "progress": almost progressive black man and white woman vs. old guard white guy. That's an experiment I would Deeeelight to see run. And the poor press, what would they do if they couldn't play race against gender in their little observations? Really, the triangulation would be fascinating!

Books by other people: Seems Oprah's been duped by another "memoir". No dis to the great O. Some writers just don't have the chop to call their book a NOVEL and compete with all those really good writers. Not to mention the insult to all the real memoirs, stories by people who lived them. Hence the word "fraud": you "memoirists" didn't earn it either way. Seriously, do not "cover" for your lack of writerly or personal chop by appeal to "being real" and being "not a writer" but some battered soul who just had to tell us about the heroine habit you screwed your dealer to support and hid from your nice suburban family for ten years, mommy. Nooooo. Go learn to write and call it a novel. Novelists go to a great deal of trouble to create convincing worlds, even worlds that examine contemporary social phenomena, and they don't fraudulently import cache and voyeuristic atavism from the word "memoir." They just do the goddamn work. Also, I smell a cultural bleed from "reality" TV to the "reality" memoir, and that cannot be a good thing -- for writing or for reality.

Books by me (and other people): A friend is writing a novel, a sort of magical realist multicultural western (which works Much better than it sounds put that way) , and sends a draft to me with this message in the email, "I am having real trouble with this." The sound of a writer in panic. No pointed questions about this or that, just the general, "Arrrrrrrgggghhhh!" -- I know the feeling. I'm having it this week. This is the hard thing about writing creative and scholarly work that makes it different from journalism (not that journalism is easy): there are any number of points in the process where you do not know what you are doing, or do not know whether what you are doing makes any sense at all. It is very, very scary given the irrecuperable Chunk of your life on those pages. It is a fear that takes lots of energy to kick through (because that is your only option). It is a fear and a kicking that makes you sullen and a bit short at the dinner table. It is almost always a total illusion. It's only good purpose is to make you stop, re-read, think harder, and then do well. Without these moments of What The Fuck Is Going On Here, writers of poetry, or fiction, or scholarship write crap.