A Writer's Thoughts

Los Angeles, California

Cathy and I facetimed for three hours on a recent Sunday. It had been over seven months since I had last done pilates in her studio, back in late February. A world ago. That is the longest I have gone without Cathy's presence since I first met her sometime around 2001. She was teaching a pilates mat class at a local studio which later morphed into a circuit training/pilates class which I took twice a week. I also started training with her individually on the pilates reformer. I followed Cathy to four studio locations as she built her own business over the next nineteen years, while doing pilates under her guidance. During that time she went on to become a licensed practitioner of Chinese medicine, so now, in addition to her unique brand of fitness/pilates, Cathy is my acupuncturist and aromatherapy wizard. She is also my friend.

Our conversations over the years have often been in bits and pieces, except on the occasions when we can arrange lunch. Often, we talk through our sessions, with the result that Cathy has to work harder to keep us focused. This is my fault, I know. We have been through a lot together. Both of us have cried; me on multiple occasions. We have shared thousands of hugs. She is one of the kindest people I know, and that is, I think, the best trait of strength that someone can carry. I think only people who are strong can be kind.

What I didn't know about Cathy is that she is a writer. So when she recently shared some of her work with me, I was stunned. Not everyone can write. Certainly every literate person can put words together. But even well-educated people often don't write well. After college, after dropping out of the graduate program I had barely begun, I took a staff position at the university I had attended. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I quickly learned it wasn't that. So, during that time, I started a business called Typing, Etc. offering typing and editing to students and professors. I typed term papers, masters theses, and textbooks on my IBM 'electronic' typewriter,, which was self-correcting and had a bit of memory storage. I should not have been surprised, having gotten my own secondary school education in the Los Angeles Unified School District, that many college students at this Los Angeles-located university, and in particular business students, could not write. LAUSD moved you forward whether you had learned or not. It had been a shock to transfer into that district after having experienced exemplary teaching and true attention to learning in the Burbank School District. Many of these students whose papers I typed had no concept of syntax; their vocabulary was stunted, and they evidently lacked the capability to look up words to correct spelling. Don't get me started on there and their, or choose and chose. I'm not being lofty, here. I am not a good speller. In fact, I once humiliated myself at an elementary school spelling bee by attempting to spell the word CERTAIN starting with the letter S. But at an early age, I learned to use a dictionary, as well as a thesaurus. Later, in my typing business, I relied upon books which list words showing only their spelling and breaking of syllables (all this, despite any evidence to the contrary here in my blogland).

I knew from all of our conversations, that Cathy is intelligent and talented.  But with all of the interests we spoke about, I don't recall literature or writing coming up. So I was completely thrown off my wheels when I read a portion of the work she was writing. It was stellarly good. I started it one night in bed instead of whatever novel I was currently reading. I stayed up until way after midnight, finishing all of it. I was moved to tears at times by her ability to put you right into the emotional bubble of whatever event she was recreating. And... I got excited. Almost eighteen months ago, I put my memoir aside after finishing a third of it. She got me thinking about it again.

So, on that Sunday, we talked about what she had created, going through the pages as we talked. And in between the pages, we talked about other things. Things that are happening right now in our country. And about our lives, both past and present. And, again, I came away with thoughts about my own work and what writing means to me.

I have always written in some form. In elementary school, my poems were chosen for the bulletin board. I wrote my first play in sixth grade, and it was performed at the end of the year assembly. I wrote short stories all through junior high and began to keep a journal the summer before high school. I wrote my first, unfinished novel in my first semester of college, and have finished two subsequent novels. But I have never thought of myself as a writer. I used to tell people in our salsa group that I was a writer. But that was mostly because it was shorter and easier than explaining myself as a business owner of a retail, outdoor furnishings business. Especially when loud music was playing. And, of course, the business did necessitate a lot of writing, though mostly in the form of doing business.

I am a writer. Because I write. And for the first time, I have two writers in my life, and we are all working on similar projects. I feel infused with their energy and am thinking about where I go with my writing from here. I have spent seven months through this pandemic, writing while bitching and complaining about this odd, stunted time; writing it in my journal, and here on this rebooted blog. I want to write more. And with the two writers in my life, and the conversations we have had, I feel a connection to writing that feels empowering. And, part of that is within the thoughts that maybe my writing can actually help someone. Maybe there can be a quality of greater good, instead of what I feel is the low-grade fever of past slights and irritating character issues that I have pinned here. Granted, these are difficult times and a lot of stuff at the bottom of the cauldron has swirled up to the surface. But my conversation with Cathy has caused me to think: What purpose does it serve to skewer an ex-friend for her stinginess on a long-ago trip, other than for a reader to maybe think Oh yeah. I have known those people too? I rationalize that I am imparting a potential thought bubble that says: This is our time to regroup. To not be cheap with our friends and with ourselves in future, non-Covid times. And I suppose that is partly my purpose. But, in another way, remembering what should have been a wonderful weekend getaway with friends, which turned into a bad experience because of one member of the group's dogmatic penuriousness, still makes me angry. And a blogpost is a convenient place for me to offload that anger.

I keep a journal. And, believe me, I offload a lot more into that than I do here in my blogland. But, maybe I can better differentiate in the future. I'm not saying that I shouldn't write from a place of anger, frustration, and despair, anymore than I would want to exclude happiness, contentment, and joy. I believe in trying to live within the full spectrum of emotion (all the rooms in the house). What I am saying is that my recent conversations with these two writers have created the thought that I should set my writing bar higher (at least by an inch or so...).

This post started out to be something completely different, and that is one of the things I love about writing. The writing itself took me down a different lane, to a different place altogether. And, as I was writing, awash in the curiosity of where I was going with all of this, I was able to escape from the reality of both pandemic and election stress, for a time. I hope that you, reader, have something in your life that provides this for you. And, that is the near-Halloween interwoven web of thought, creativity, and, if you will, humanity, making up the ponderings of this writer's mind on this late autumn morning. Thank  you  for  reading  my  blog.    GO DODGERS... on a wing and a Hail Mary!