The Life of the Gypsy

Were it not for the husband and child, I am finally living the life of the peripatetic--the gypsy. But now that I have the permanence of marriage and a child, well, my my new life living out of suitcases feels less like freedom than marking time. I know the 'farewells,' will really start in full throttle now. Five years ago, my husband had demanded what is was I wanted from our life--to come up with a five year plan. This loaded question would, for the normal person, have been ignored as the frustrations of a spouse tired of his wife badgering him about why we had to live here, of all places. And yes, five years ago, Chicago was sounding like paradise to me, so you can imagine how desperate I was for us to move. Well, I took in his question, really a demand for me to assess where and what the hell I was doing, and sat down and wrote him a letter, which he's kept all of these years. The letter, remember I am the writer, was a thoughtful picture of the ideal life, including places we would live and jobs we would have.

The irony of this letter is that my husband has, as of this writing, done all the things that I had hoped for him. And now it is my turn to actualize my part of this ideal life: get my book published and write more. Someone recently suggested I volunteer in New York with the New York branch of an organization I had worked with in Los Angeles. I didn't want to be rude, but I know the pressure for me to 'get on with it' is going to be so much more immense once my feet step on to that island of 8 million people. There will be no excuse for me to not get busy, to shop my book more assiduously, but more importantly, to start my next project, most likely another novel. And my time, which I spent here--most of my grad school peers and mentors would accuse as being frivolously--will not, can not be repeated in New York. This life of working quietly, unacknowledged my most, or understood, is difficult, to say the least. When your life is dictated by something other than the normal validations of a work life--money, advancement, titles--the internal drive becomes the only thing that can afford you some measure of peace and sense of fulfillment.

My therapist has said that she needs me to focus once in New York, to not let myself get distracted. I've thought about her concerns for me as I embark on this new life, how I'm now being given this opportunity to make my life something so different from what has been. And how I may not be given this chance again in my life. For any writer, these middle years become a time of real serious work. So the big question is for me to find my way to this next project. I've stopped badgering myself about why I haven't done so already because, as you are by now well aware, this badgering could consume all of my time and energy, thereby preventing me from getting on with it.

Sometimes I feel like the needed isolation, quiet for what I do is, in many ways, a very anti-social way to live. Also, when I am in the throes of any project, it is impossible for my brain to stop living in it, even after the computer has been turned off. It becomes this other life, sometimes so much more appealing than reality. All of this is fine if you didn't have people that depended on you to be present, to be available. And perhaps that is what has prevented me from diving headlong into another project. After the birth of my son, it somehow felt selfish, to divert my attention away from his needs to seek solace in this impossible thing of putting together words to paint a picture of feelings, emotions. But now, after years of being miserable because I haven't been working, I realize that I need to do it regardless of how present I am or not. Ultimately, our son, poor child, will seek the couch in his life, I'm certain. I'd rather he sit there moaning about what a distracted crazy mother I was instead of complaining about what a miserable, unhappy, and crazy mother I had been. Yes, I realize no matter what I do or don't do, he will always consider me a bit insane. That criticism I can live with because there are so few people I meet that are truly sane. But the other stuff, well, those would devastate me.

The sun, thankfully, has come out today. This city is unsuited for gloomy days. There are certain cities where fog or gray adds ambiance to its character, but not LA. This place is at its best when the sun blankets every bit of the expansive landscape in that brilliant iridescence, absolutely indescribable. And so, I now spend my time pondering this loaded question of what I will work on now. My last novel, the genesis for the idea, hit me, literally, as I was cooking dinner. It was this one moment of realization that set me on my way to sit down over the course of two plus years and write this book. I guess I'm waiting for this same thing to happen again. Although I'm now thinking that I may be waiting the rest of my life for such a moment, so again, I must simply get on with it, plant my ass for more than the time it takes me to write this blog, and work. Plain and simple, if only it were so.