So there’s the infamous 50 and 55 words competitions, which I personally loathe because…well, because I don’t succeed at them well. The aim is to write an entire story in 50 or 55 words, usually a twist in the story helps. Here is my recent attempt. Try it–you’ll despise love it, too!

Rejections poured down on the would-be author. “Thanks, but no thanks” and “you can write! But, sorry–not for us.”

Time to go into the publishing business, he thought. He approached the bank with his idea. “Thanks, but no thanks,” they said. “You can dream! But sorry–not on us.”

Okay, now. What did you expect her to do? Her next therapy session wasn’t for several days, so who could she talk to? I mean, really, a girl like that will light into fire if she doesn’t get it out. She’s constitutionally unable to play it cool.

So, first she tried to talk to God. Are you there God, it’s me, Sad Sack. But the hurt spilled over and she didn’t think she’d earned the right to ask for comfort. Because (and here’s the irony!) she’d created the hurt. Engineered it.

And so then she talked to her sibling, who genuinely sympathized, because having grown up with her, he knew she was the sensitive sort and he knew she bruised easily. He told her it would all be alright. (But it wasn’t alright. It was terrible.)

So she called an ex-boyfriend and he told her to “chin up”—these things happen. Hopes get taken in hand and squeezed until the life is blackened out—that’s a part of life, and anyway, didn’t she know she’d dodged a bullet? She should be thanking her lucky stars! Finally, “you always were so naïve. God, I worry about you.”

At lunch, her longtime good girlfriend listened for a while, shaking her head and wondering aloud what satisfactory outcome “could you possibly have imagined?” She prescribed a big glass of wine and steered the conversation away, quickly. I think we all know that her friend found the whole thing distasteful and what she really wanted was to catch up and relax…this talk (full of surprises and uncomfortable insights) wasn’t what she’d come all the way downtown for. No.

So what does that leave? Well, let’s see. Father Confessor? No. Boss lady? Uh, no. Playdate mom? Negative. Neighbor? Get serious.

I think that leaves one person. But that one person is it. The issue. The crux.

Countdown to therapy, in 4-3-2-1…and on and on.

###

When I was in college, I became very fond of the movie, Postcards from the Edge. Have you seen it? Featured are two female members of a family…well, let’s be clear here–they are mother and daughter, always a potent and complex relationship. I loved the movie for its depiction of a mother’s overeager desire for her daughter to present a ladylike, charming, poised facade while living in a vortex of family dysfunction. Did I love the movie because I could relate? Maybe yes, maybe no…that’s for me to know, and you’ll never find out! But I digress.

The movie positioned humor and charm into a situation the viewer could see was essentially untenable and often, implicitly unbearable. And so, one learns by watching this kind of comedy that given space and a sense of remove, we can indeed laugh at the things that are difficult to experience in real time.

So, Postcards was me in my 20s.

I’m older now. And recently, a friend pointed out that I’m playing captured patient to my very own Nurse Ratched. Of course, he’s referring to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Through this lens of pop-culture match-up, I find levity where normally there wouldn’t be any. So maybe in this very simplistic way, that’s what pop culture does for us: it allows us see our lives with the variance of humor attached.

Woody Allen says that humor is tragedy given space and time. I agree.

Posed for my civil servant card today. Can one be a starving writer and a servant to the public at once? I hope so. Trying to keep up with my writing, but “real” work interferes. Here I am…respectable worker. This is the pic on my namebadge. I don’t know if this girl looks like a struggling, passionate writer…but inside, she is…she is!

Well, Merry Christmas to all. I am hopeful and excited about the new year. 2008 promises to be action-packed, what with the election coming up. In general, change seems to be in the air.

For those of you still working on your writing, best wishes to you in the New Year. Please wish me the same. If you didn’t figure out, I failed dismally at NaNoWriMo. But November 2008 is only 11 months away!  I shall try, try again.

In other news…I will begin my employ as a public servant with Marin County at the end of this month. I am thrilled…anticipating a year of learning, growing, contributing.

So as we head into 2008…I leave you with the Desiderata:

http://nanowrimo.org