Thursday, July 12, 2007 7:20 AM
"Subtle Foundation Change"
Well my life is in change. I can feel it. It must be the foundation. Because the change is taking place so subtly and gently. It's almost as if someone decided to move a whole house, from here to there, it would have to be done so subtly and gently, so the house does not collapse in the process. Basically from the point of view of the house, it would not even know it was being dug up, being hoisted on a flat bed, and moved to another location. Because by nature houses are permanent structures. They are built from the ground up with a lot of concrete, precisely so they won't move. But I guess if the foundation can be loosened ever so gently, a house can be moved. And I am feeling the finest most subtle changes in my foundation.
On the surface nothing is changing at all. Which I guess is the idea, the house must not be ruffled. I am having the minimalist life I seem to have every hot desert summer, altho this summer it seems even more minimalist than ever. I read library books on my bed, I go to swim pool, I stop at store on way home, and that is it. I line up frosty drinks by my bed so I can sip on them as I read my Agatha Raisin mysteries.
It’s almost like being pregnant watching the fine subtle inner changes taking place in my mind. There is waiting, there is expectancy, and there is sense of something new being born. And a knowing that the simple unruffled surface is not where the action is taking place. Also an odd detachment as if other forces are ruling my life, which I can observe from the outside like the weather. First there was a completely empty week, no one emailed me, no one called on the phone, there was just nothing. And I didn’t write either, it was just a total emptiness. And then to my surprise, late one evening, there was a forwarded email from Helen. “Anne, I thought you'd be interested in this.” And it was from Irene’s friends back in New York about arranging a show of Irene’s paintings. And so I sat down to write to the 6 names on the email list that I thought someone should go to the Museum of Modern Art, talk to curator there, tell them all about Irene and ask for a showing of her art there. It is the logical place for Irene’s work to be shown, she is a modern artist. I had a lot of fun writing that email, thinking about where Irene’s art belonged and how to go about putting it there.
And I got off the machine happy, and went back to read the last chapter of the mystery before I went to bed. And I was glad something new had come into my life and I had something new to think about. But I also knew nothing would happen with Irene’s art, that this was all about having something interesting to email back and forth about. “Good! I am glad for the activity” I thought, “something happening in email.”
Then the next day I found a phone message from Linda Feldman. She had been away at a conference, that is why she had not called me back. And that was a tremendously exciting event in my life. This was a project I really wanted to do, buy her a beautiful birthday card, write it out, select a little present to send her, and hopefully print up some of my stories to send her too. It was so exciting and big, I had to calm myself down, and think “one step at a time, I have all the time in the world.” And there were emails from the girls I had written to about Irene’s art work, so I had emails to answer.
And the next day I found a phone message from Karen, she had finally called me back, and I had asked her to help me preparing my book for publication. So that was another huge thing in my life to think about, what I will ask Karen when I call her back. And there were other little emails too.
And then the next morning, I didn’t do any of the things I said I would do, instead I wrote. And that was a big adventure in my life, to write again. And after the swim pool I did go to the mall and get a spectacular birthday card for Linda Feldman, it is still in my bag, so all of a sudden my life filled up. It went from total emptiness to that first email about Irene’s art show, like the first bird call at dawn, and now it is so full of projects I don’t know where to start.
Yesterday morning I did not do anything about any of my projects. Instead I got out the little story I had written the day before, and I began to edit it. And I worked doing that till I had no more energy to keep going working on it. Then we went to mall for me to return my skirt and buy Bill the 2 T shirts he wanted, and then we went to Randolph Pool, and he went to the weight gym, and I hung out in water. And I watched the day camp children arrive in the pool, and be all excited about the frog in the water. And finally Bill arrived, and I hung out in water while he swam, and then we bought a bag of ice and went home.
And I did not do one solitary thing. I just went to my bed, got out my mysteries, filled up all my cups with icy drinks, had a wonderful delicious lunch with two desserts, and smoked cigarettes and read my mystery. And fell asleep when it got dark. I woke up at 1 AM and checked my email, answered email, and lurked on my political site, I no longer post. And then went back to bed at 2:30.
I woke up at 6. Shut off all the nightlights, put up the coffee and went back to bed. And got up at 7. I decided to write. I didn’t go back to editing my story from two days ago, I didn’t start preparing Linda’s birthday present, I didn’t call Karen back about how to go about publishing my book, I didn’t look for the instruction manual on how to put new print cartridge in my printer, so I can print up my stories for Linda. I just pushed all my new projects out of my mind, and decided to write instead.
The week of total emptiness was so awful that I was thrilled to have projects again. And I am still happy to have projects, it felt so empty having no long distance contact, no emails, no phone calls, only talking to people in swim pool or stores or Bill. I planned to settle down instantly, and happily go about my projects. But the day after they all swam into my life, Bill took me to see “Waitress” at the dollar movie theater, after our swim. He had liked it so much he wanted to see it a second time with me. And the experience of that movie was like an atom bomb going off in my life.
It was billed as a light romantic comedy, and at first it just seemed to have every cliché in the book. Then I was stunned Bill had liked a movie so much about a girl being pregnant and on the phone with her doctor about spotting. When you’re with a guy it takes a while to dawn that the movies they love are the ones which don’t interest you, the only ones they really want to see are “Predator 1” and “Predator 2”. And then finally you have your mind firmly wrapped around that fact. You realize they like all the actors who don’t interest you, and all the movies which don’t interest you. And then out of nowhere they take you to their favorite movie, and it is all about a woman being pregnant and on the phone with her doctor about spotting. And your mind is blown. “I’m a girl” I thought as I watched the movie, “and even I am not interested in being pregnant and spotting. I guess I don’t know my husband at all if this is his favorite movie.”
And so I watched the movie with all its clichés, and the awful husband, who was awful because he was such a drag. You couldn’t get away from him, every other scene there he was again, being such a drag. And she started up an affair with her doctor. So either she was at home with awful husband, or having sex with her doctor, or in the pie diner making a pie with her two fellow waitresses. And either she was 5 months pregnant, or then 9 months pregnant and huge. And then she is in the delivery room, being told to push, and you see her breathing and pushing. And then a baby girl is born. And the first thing she does is break up with her husband, he is in the delivery room. “Go away I never want to see you again!” she says. And when he acts up 5 burly attendants remove him. Then her friends are wheeling her out of the hospital with the baby in her arms. “Back up!” she said when she sees her doctor who she has been having the love affair with. “It’s over,” she tells him, “thank you for the great time, I had a great time, but it’s over, you have a nice wife.” Before she broke up with husband and lover, she had opened up the card from the old man who owned the pie diner. “Start a fresh life, Jenna” he had written and enclosed check for $270,000. And she saw the check, ended her relationship with both men, named her daughter Lulu. And the last scene, the pie diner is now called “Lulu's Pie Diner,” and she is baking pies, and her two year old daughter is in matching apron helping. Then she and her two year old daughter walk off into the sunset together.
And it caused an atom bomb to go off in my life. I came straight home and could not even read any of my mysteries. When I recovered any energy at all I thought about the movie. And finally I realized that little Jewish girl from Queens, who wrote and directed this movie, and acted the part of the other waitress, the silly one-- blew up marriage, blew up monogamy, and by blowing up marriage and monogamy, she had blown up every convention there ever was.
I knew why Bill had loved the movie, because it was brilliant and earthshaking. And it was great art even tho nothing in the movie was real. Altho there is tremendous power watching her be 9 months pregnant. Her pregnancy and her hopelessness gave it its substantiality. And then total liberation at the end, when she has her baby girl and check for $270,000, and she sets off to follow her dreams, which is just to bake pies and be with her darling daughter. She falls in love with her daughter and gets rid of husband and lover.
It took me 8 hours to recover from that movie. A girl had just blown up the world, and it needed to be blown up. And the next morning I began to edit the story I had written the morning before, about the little Navajo girl at swim pool and exchanging my skirt at JC Penney’s. I’m not a girl who blows up anything, I am content to do my little hem stitching on the sidelines. My life is a little girl in swim pool and a wonderful helpful sales lady at JC Penney. But all the movie critics who called the “Waitress” a lighthearted romantic comedy missed the boat. As Bill said when we first got home, It is like when rock 'n' roll first started, it seems like just a few silly lyrics at first, but it rocked the world...
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