• the unreliable narrator • : four more cloth pads later

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four more cloth pads later

Tuesday 3 July 2007 | 2 cookies in the jar

These ones from Mimi’s Dreams, in the following patterns. Fortunately they’re only $2.50 or $3.75, depending on their length. I guess if the Evil Twin has to have an addiction, there could be worse ones. Also, another half-dozen bonbons have somehow mysteriously disappeared.

purple flowered cotton But…an hour on the phone to Boston has also cleared up most of the editor’s queries, most of which will probably not be that onerous after all. Apparently I read a statement like “I’m confused about the focus of the three different sections; the content of this one doesn’t seem that different” and then interpret it as, “this is woefully incoherent and repetitive and you must rewrite all seven chapters in this section!” when the editor merely means, “we need to add subtitles.” (But why couldn’t she have said that in the first place? Just because she’s speed-reading forty manuscripts at once is no excuse for vaguely threatening queries!) And the editor also went on and on, near the end of our call, about what hot stuff I am and how much she loves the book now and that I should get back in touch with her when I have time, as soon as possible, because she definitely wants me to do freelance copyediting for them. I fell totally silent, flabbergasted. Finally I croaked out, with as little dignity as possible, “Well, now I’m over here diggin’ my toe in the dirt. Um, thank you. I will certainly do that.”

Now to pin down Herself for her final contributions; I know she’s home, because the Boston editor has been on and off the phone with her all day, but she doesn’t take my calls.

flannel with moons It’s 2 pm, and I pick up my dopey, drunken, dentifriced and denuded Pyewacket in an hour. In the course of the morning errands, I also discovered it’s impossible to purchase something that used to be an entirely common household item: the white metal enamelware pail or bucket, with handle and lid (desired for soaking cloth pads). We had half-a-dozen of these when I was a kid—to hold compost, feed, scraps for the chickens—for collecting eggs and milking the goats. You know—like a diaper pail, only littler. Anyway, now I can’t find one anywhere. Maybe I should check El Paisano, or the thrift stores, for this once-indispensible household object whose utility seems to have passed into historical memory.

I also had the next-to-the-last session with the DBT, who did not seem at all horrified to hear about the bonbons, the foot cream or the cloth pads. Further, she feels that what I call my Evil Twin probably bears a close resemblance to what DBT would call my Wise Mind, especially when she heard me confessing:

“The Evil Twin read the entire book manuscript while I shivered and wept and ate bonbons. And she found all these places where the editor was telling me to fix something, but not telling me how. But where I would just assume, ‘Okay, it’s my problem, I have to figure it out somehow,’ the Evil Twin is all, like, ‘No way, I need a lot more info than that,’ and then she writes this seven-page letter to the Boston editor asking for specific instructions! She’s so much tougher than I am. I just tend to assume it’s all my fault when I’m overwhelmed, and if I can’t handle it then there must be something wrong with me, because I’m lazy or cowardly; whereas her default assumption is that the instructions were vague, that she hasn’t been allocated enough resources or that she’s not being sufficiently supported.”

The DBT waves her hands in the air comically, mouthing “Wise Mind! Wise Mind!”. I titter, lapse into silence.

hello kitty geisha flannel! “So I’m already thinking about this fall? That if I get in the weeds and feel overwhelmed, maybe try not to go straight to my usual assumption—that I’m just avoiding the work because I’m weak or lazy or have a personality disorder or whatever. But instead maybe I could look around and see if I’m missing information, or resources, or support, or anything. Because this keeps happening to me with jobs—if someone asks me to do it, I assume it’s humanly possible, and that I must be inadequate if I can’t get it done on time or the way they want it done. It usually never occurs to me to check the premises—to ask myself, ‘Hey, wait a minute—am I overwhelmed because this task is actually overwhelming?’ And of course when I go straight into beating myself up, then I can’t check the facts, because I’m hiding under a pile of coats hoping I’ll just die.”

I go on to babble about teaching part-time at the tribal college while simultaneously managing an seven-person federal grant team and implementing an extremely unpopular college-wide student database system. I tell the DBT how with every semester I got tasked with more and new and different stuff, while somehow never dropping all that much of the older stuff. I tell her about the weekly meetings, during which I came to serve as the punching bag/fall guy/patsy for grumpy faculty, staff directors and the college president to pound on publicly. I tell her how charming and intelligent and inspiring the Lascivious Former Boss was, how skillfully his agenda insinuated itself into mine, and how I could barely say no to him, about anything, without falling into weeks-long depressions.

And then I go on, raving, about writing for the alt weekly, and promising stupid things—such as the promise that I’d watch a Thursday night sneak-preview from midnight until 2:30 am, then write the review and get it to them first thing the same morning, then watch a second film until noon and write the second review by 3 pm that Friday. (Because I had once been told, and I didn’t even question this, that I always had to review first-run or opening films, never anything as old as a week.) And I rave too about the amount of copy I wrote versus the amount I was paid. Not that there was anything wrong with it, really—it’s a decent starting pay, it’s just not appropriate for someone in mid-career, which meant it wasn’t appropriate for me. But instead of thinking: I’m a decent writer and I should try to earn what I’m worth, I thought: I guess I’m just not worth very much—I guess arts writers aren’t as important as news writers—I guess I’m to blame because I can’t figure out how to live on this, or how to take on more jobs at the same time. I should write more query letters! I should manage my time better! I should I should I should. But instead of really troubleshooting or problem-solving, I assumed the problem was me. And I stayed there longer than I should have, became increasingly avoidant, bitter and unhappy, missed deadlines, and then was unsurprisingly given the boot.

japanese fans on black cotton Finally, I tell her how the same thing happened when I was Herself’s student. How any inability on my part to follow the schedule, keep up with her or do whatever it was she’d asked me to do, was always clearly about my own inadequacy and not the situation or her requirements or the support I wasn’t getting. She’d never be overtly critical; she’s more subtle than that. Instead she’d say, “You’re just learning how to be in the flow of the practice, and I understand that takes time. You’ll get there. In the meantime….[keep doing what I told you to do no matter how wiped out or fried you are]. Because,” she’d finish dramatically, “I need you! I need you here in the field of practice!” And the giant blue eyes would be fixed desperately upon me and then how could I say no?

Here I pause to catch my breath and my whirling thoughts. The DBT nods, beaming to see me suddenly synthesizing fifteen things at once.

“And the wonderful thing about all of this,” she says, leaning forward, “is that now you get to do it differently.”

“If I can remember,” I mutter. “If I don’t fuck it up.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

I stare at the carpeting and think, next time—our last time—I should bring her a Kit-Kat Bar, her favorite junk food. Then I think, that’s a really lame present for someone who’s toiled alongside me for over two years, working first to save my life and then to help make my life worth saving. But I can’t think of anything else to get her. I should have beaded her a rosary, though every bone in her body is irreligious—I could have dangled a basketball charm from its tip. Maybe she’d like cloth menstrual pads?

Or maybe instead I’ll just finish the damn book, pack, move in with the Brujo, start a new job, get my graduate degree, spend winter somewhere that won’t depress me, write my brains out, and live happily ever after. Maybe that would be a sufficient token of my esteem, for now.

2 cookies in the jar

miss bovary said on Friday 6 Jul 2007 at 11.46 am:
I rather like your evil twin.
Oleoptene said on Tuesday 1 Sep 2009 at 3.04 pm:
Long live the evil twin!

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• the unreliable narrator •

four more cloth pads later

2 cookies in the jar

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