Friday September 21 2007 7:16 am
“The Writers Meeting Last Night (another meeting which wasn’t)”
Yesterday was the writers meeting at Barnes and Noble. I was surprised they were having it. Because the last time I had been there, the last one in June, we were informed there wouldn’t be another one till October. And since Barnes and Noble cannot host them in November and December because their bookstore is too crowded with Christmas shoppers, I hadn’t expected them to resume till January. As far as I was concerned they were off the table for the foreseeable future.
It is the Southwest Authors Society who runs them. They send one of their board members on the 3rd Thursday of each month to Barnes and Noble to run the meeting. They liaison with Barnes & Noble community relations person. The meetings were fairly regular when Steve ran them. He missed a few meetings but not that many. When he went back to Los Angeles to be with his wife, DewAnne took over. She reliably showed up for 3 or 4 times but then informed SAS she didn’t want to do it anymore, she is too busy. And so SAS decided they would rotate among their board members since no one wanted to commit to it. So Penny showed up for the first of the rotated ones. No! I don’t think that was true! Penny was scheduled to show up for the first of the rotated ones, and she was a no-show. And after that it has been no-show ever since. Which is why I was not surprised when I found out Southwest Authors had canceled it until deep into the Fall. Clearly no one wanted to show up to do it.
So of course I was surprised when Maria called last week and said there is one this week. But I was glad because I like going to them. It is practically around the corner and it is free. I did go to the Authors Luncheon way back in the Spring when I realized there would be no Barnes & Noble meeting till the following year. I thought I would switch over to Authors Luncheons once a month instead. But that is such a bigger deal. It costs $20 so you have to decide if you want to spend it, is it worth it? It is a banquet and there is huge drama about sneaking food home. And it is a very big party.
I am so much happier with the quiet little thing at Barnes & Noble, right in my own neighborhood.
Usually Bill takes me. The meetings are only one hour, and he likes to read the football game magazines. These magazines now cost 10 dollars. He doesn’t want to buy them but he likes sitting in their comfortable chair reading them.
Maria always offers to drive me, since it is so easy for her to pick me up on the way there. But Maria likes to stay after the meeting ends. Sometimes there is another meeting, a film meeting, and she likes to go to that. Or she likes to talk to people who show up at our meeting. Or she likes to look at the books and magazines. She wants a much bigger evening out of it than I do, I like going to the meeting then coming home. So Bill is perfect for me.
However on Friday evenings in Fall he goes with his friend Jim to the high school football games. And none of us could understand why the games weren’t on Friday this week but on Thursday instead. And finally Bill said “maybe because of the Jewish holiday.” And sure enough Friday evening (tonight) is eve of Yom Kippur. So the big game Bill and Jim were looking forward to see was last night, Thursday night. And as soon as I realized that, on late Wednesday afternoon, that their game and my meeting were the same evening, I didn’t know what to do. So when Maria called yesterday morning I told her. She said “I’ll drive you.” I said “but Maria you like to stay for a long time afterwards and I like to go home.” And so she compromised. She said “I will only stay 1/2 hour afterwards.” And I said “perfect!”
So Jim picked up Bill for the game at 6 pm, and I began choosing an outfit then. It wasn’t that easy. I had no idea what I was in the mood to wear, and in fact I was so comfortable in my play clothes. I wasn’t in the mood to put on a bra and nice clothes at all. Secretly I was reluctant to go but I paid no heed to that. Now that I am with my Higher Self I don’t go by my moods. If she says “Go!” I go. Period.
It took a lot of changing of clothes before I found an outfit I liked. But I did like the outfit I wound up with. The top was navy blue and lacy, and tight but not too tight, sleeveless and cut-out in front and back, scooped neck, dressy looking. And I had a long tight black skirt to wear with it, and black sling-back suede heels. I was just not in the mood for ruffles and most of my skirts are all ruffles. And I was not in the mood for happy summer colors, which are most of my stuff. In a way I didn’t want to be seen. I just didn’t want to go, and I didn’t want to be dressed up. And an outfit which meets those conditions is not so easy to find. I wound up dressed up. But I was content because it was navy blue and black and no ruffles.
I took my red leather handbag because that had room for a little book to write in, and I put my shoes in that too. I thought I would put them on when I arrived. I actually wound up with a nice outfit altho all I wanted was to look inconspicuous. It is so rare that Bill and I are both out of the house at same time and not together, I found my keys so I could lock the door. And then I put on my clothes, put everything in my handbag, closed the front windows, and prepared to wait for Maria. When Beanie barked loud, I knew she had arrived and I was all prepared to meet her. I was worried I wouldn’t know how to lock the door, Bill always does that, but I figured it out, and I got into Maria’s car.
She took an opposite route there than the one Bill takes and did not want to hear my suggestion for the short-cut, she likes the route she always takes. Neither of us were in the best of moods in the car, I think secretly neither of us wanted to go, and both of us knew no one would show up for it. Which is exactly what happened.
The meetings are now held in the café, and we sat in the cafe and no one showed up. So Maria and I had conversation, and neither of us were enjoying the conversation. She went to bring me the book on how you can make anything happen you want to happen thru the use of your mind, and said “Read!”
And I said “I’m not going to read it, I read a 1000 page text on the mind, there is nothing I don’t know about the mind creating reality, it’s called A Course In Miracles.” Because Maria is Polish and she came over here when she was all grown and had met her American husband over there, even tho she has been here 40 years now, communicating in English always has glitches. It never goes smoothly. When I said the name of the book was A Course In Miracles, she said “what miracles! this book is not about miracles!” I said “I don’t want to read it.”
When she tells me which books to read enthusiastically on the phone, I am able to be more acquiescent. I respond enthusiastically, I thank her, I write down the name, but I never plan to read them. But when she put the book in front of my face and said “read!” I just said “I don’t want to.”
We just couldn’t find any conversation topic that both of us enjoyed. So she went to get “Fortune” magazine to read it for herself. And I said “I’m going to the desk to talk to them, and tell them they can’t advertise they are having a meeting when there is no meeting, and I am going to have a cigarette outside.”
I discovered there were tables outside where everyone was sitting and smoking a cig, and having their coffee or reading outside. And I sat at a table where I could see Maria inside reading her “Fortune” magazine, and smoked a cigarette. I thought, we may as well just go home. Everything felt so frustrated. First there was no meeting, and the talking with Maria was frustrating to me. So then I went to the desk and asked for the community relations person. And she made some phone calls and said “Dina is not here, what is the problem.” And I said “I am here for the meeting” and before I got to continue, she said “your meeting has started, it is in the cafe and two have just showed up for it.” Of course I thought she meant me and Maria but when I went to our table there were two ladies there.
So I sat down and let Maria introduce them to me. Maria had met them the evening before and invited them to this. She had found a writers group way downtown, in her neighborhood, and the evening before she had gone. Everyone there writes memoirs and they read from their memoirs. Maria was very excited, she loved what people read and she said the woman who led the group is from Akron. Apparently Akron, Ohio is where Maria had lived all that time with her husband, he was music professor there. Maria was convinced the woman must have known her husband, since the woman was at the university too.
One of the women, Sandy, was a laugh-a-minute woman. This is someone I have very very very rarely encountered in real life, but in books you encounter a person like this all the time. They don’t talk in normal conversation, whatever they say is designed to make you laugh. At first it confused me but then I got into it. I was glad someone wanted to be a spark-plug because it had all been so dreary. Her spark-plug energy made my energy rise. I thought “at least they are new faces, new people to meet.”
It was a tiny bit daunting at first because her friend Margaret, the one I got to talk to (Maria wound up talking to Sandy) really did look dreary to me. You think “is that what happens at that age, awful hair, awful skin, awful clothes, and awful turned-down dreary face.” But when Marie was driving me home, she said she had forced herself to swim 20 laps in the pool today because she wanted to look beautiful and sexy for the meeting. “And you do!” I said, “you look beautiful and sexy.” “No” she said, “no” she demurred. But Maria did, she looked like a knock-out. I said “Margaret needs help, she did not look gorgeous and sexy one bit.” And Maria said “Margaret has given up.” Maria said “I take care of myself, I always put effort into looking nice, but Margaret has given up.”
That is a whole new concept for me. I bet Maria and Margaret are the same age. I had no idea you could look like Maria at that age, or look like Margaret at that age, and it was up to you. It was such a strange new concept to me, “Margaret has given up.” Altho Maria felt very comfortable with that concept, she diagnosed the problem right away.
I really didn’t mind talking to Margaret even tho her being matched her looks. She said she and her husband had lived in Hawaii back in the ‘60s, he had teaching job there. And I was very curious about Hawaii because Helen lives there now.
Margaret said it would not have been such a culture shock if they had moved there from Ohio where she grew up. But they moved there from Tucson and were used to desert beauty. She didn’t have anything good to say about Hawaii. She said they have hills not mountains like we do. But when it was time to leave Hawaii she discovered she loved it and was very sorry to leave and missed it. She likes the Midwest too. And we both talked about the flowers and berries. I know them from New York State, but she had grown up in the country, she knew the berries and nuts much better than I do.
She said she won’t get a dog because she grew up on ten acres where dogs ran wild and free and happily in the woods and it seems unfair to keep them in little house with little yard. But maybe it would perk Margaret up to have a pet to lavish love on. Maria has Seema, and loving Seema is her whole life.
Of course Maria had a better time talking to laugh-a-minute Sandy than I had with dreary Margaret. But I didn’t care. I had come to the meeting to have a new experience, and if my new experience was talking to Margaret, that was fine with me.
After half an hour Sandy said she is exhausted and wants to go home. And Maria said she is willing to leave now too. So we each headed to the car. Altho first Maria went to buy the “Fortune” magazine she had been reading.
Maria and I were both very perked up from meeting Sandy and Margaret, for both of us something had happened. We both said “it isn’t right for SAS to keep saying they will have the meeting and not having the meeting, and we both said we would talk to them about this, and we both said we had a great time anyway, which was true. Maria said “it’s nice for you to get out of the house in the evening and have a change, Annie.” Which is true. I said “I liked it, I had a good time.” We both said it’s unfair to say there is a meeting and there isn’t because we both put effort into it, we plan around it all day. I said “you swam 20 laps so you would look gorgeous and sexy at the meeting, and I changed my outfit 5 times, and put a lot of effort working it out so Bill could go to the game and I could go to the meeting.”
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