Thierry Sagnier's Blog, page 22
April 13, 2016
Snippets
“Buried a dog today.” The man was in his seventies, a little bent at the waist and wearing a watch cap. He was one of the people the food store hired to herd carts, retrieving them from the far reaches of the parking lot and bringing them back to the fold.
The other man, a dark thin cashier perhaps from the Indian subcontinent, looked pained. “I am so sorry,” he said. “That is very hard.”
It wasn’t anything more than a snippet of conversation, but I thought about if for the better part of the day.
It was easy to imagine scenarios: An old man and his dog together for years, and one of them passes away. If it’s the dog, short takes from a motion picture spring to mind. The man is in his efficiency apartment. There’s a chair and an ancient blocky TV set, an unmade bed, a water bowl on the floor, and a leash on the kitchen counter. There’s sad music maybe from the Moody Blues as the man empties the bowl in the sink and throws away the leash.
If it’s the man, the story perhaps becomes more complex: The dog stays by his late master. The rescue people eventually come. They take the old man away on a gurney and one of the EMTs adopts the dog. The EMT’s daughter loves the aging animal. It spends the rest of its life comfortable and ensconced in a warm suburban home, being handfed Kibbles. Or the EMT doesn’t like dogs; he was bitten by a Lassie collie as a kid and never forgave the entire canine species. He calls the animal shelter. The dog, old and unattractive, is euthanized.
Endless permutations.
I felt sorry for the now dogless old man and wondered if he might go to the pound and get another companion. Probably not, I decided. Another animal would need training, and after eight hours of chasing and retrieving shopping carts, the old man would be too tired to teach a new dog old tricks. So the old man would end up alone in an apartment where the phone never rings, eating minimum wage baked beans with a plastic fork from a can. Terribly sad, really, and completely fictional.
One of the issues with writing—or perhaps it’s really not a problem at all—is that everything is a story. An overheard conversation becomes a dialogue with a plot. Someone else’s consternation is a play in the making. A poem or song springs half-written from an eavesdropped comment. I recently wrote a story on manhole covers simply because one I was standing on had striking design (plus, it moved under my feet. You’ll have to read the story.) Truly, it never ends. I’m pretty sure writers see and hear things differently from others. We attach great meaning to the meaningless, and this sometimes makes spoken conversation difficult. My friend Arielle, with whom I have many co-writing projects, occasionally accuses me of being incapable of finishing one thought before I launch another. I have been known to interrupt myself.
But back to the man who buried a dog.
I have a cat. We’re both getting older. When we meet in the morning, there’s an unspoken conversation.
Me: “Hey. You’re still alive. Good.”
Cat: “Yeah. You’re alive too. Feed me.”
So maybe it’s not that complex after all.
The other man, a dark thin cashier perhaps from the Indian subcontinent, looked pained. “I am so sorry,” he said. “That is very hard.”
It wasn’t anything more than a snippet of conversation, but I thought about if for the better part of the day.
It was easy to imagine scenarios: An old man and his dog together for years, and one of them passes away. If it’s the dog, short takes from a motion picture spring to mind. The man is in his efficiency apartment. There’s a chair and an ancient blocky TV set, an unmade bed, a water bowl on the floor, and a leash on the kitchen counter. There’s sad music maybe from the Moody Blues as the man empties the bowl in the sink and throws away the leash.
If it’s the man, the story perhaps becomes more complex: The dog stays by his late master. The rescue people eventually come. They take the old man away on a gurney and one of the EMTs adopts the dog. The EMT’s daughter loves the aging animal. It spends the rest of its life comfortable and ensconced in a warm suburban home, being handfed Kibbles. Or the EMT doesn’t like dogs; he was bitten by a Lassie collie as a kid and never forgave the entire canine species. He calls the animal shelter. The dog, old and unattractive, is euthanized.
Endless permutations.
I felt sorry for the now dogless old man and wondered if he might go to the pound and get another companion. Probably not, I decided. Another animal would need training, and after eight hours of chasing and retrieving shopping carts, the old man would be too tired to teach a new dog old tricks. So the old man would end up alone in an apartment where the phone never rings, eating minimum wage baked beans with a plastic fork from a can. Terribly sad, really, and completely fictional.
One of the issues with writing—or perhaps it’s really not a problem at all—is that everything is a story. An overheard conversation becomes a dialogue with a plot. Someone else’s consternation is a play in the making. A poem or song springs half-written from an eavesdropped comment. I recently wrote a story on manhole covers simply because one I was standing on had striking design (plus, it moved under my feet. You’ll have to read the story.) Truly, it never ends. I’m pretty sure writers see and hear things differently from others. We attach great meaning to the meaningless, and this sometimes makes spoken conversation difficult. My friend Arielle, with whom I have many co-writing projects, occasionally accuses me of being incapable of finishing one thought before I launch another. I have been known to interrupt myself.
But back to the man who buried a dog.
I have a cat. We’re both getting older. When we meet in the morning, there’s an unspoken conversation.
Me: “Hey. You’re still alive. Good.”
Cat: “Yeah. You’re alive too. Feed me.”
So maybe it’s not that complex after all.
Snippets
“Buried a dog today.” The man was in his seventies, a little bent at the waist and wearing a watch cap. He was one of the people the food store hired to herd carts, retrieving them from the far reaches of the parking lot and bringing them back to the fold.
The other man, a dark thin cashier perhaps from the Indian subcontinent, looked pained. “I am so sorry,” he said. “That is very hard.”
It wasn’t anything more than a snippet of conversation, but I thought about if for the better part of the day.
It was easy to imagine scenarios: An old man and his dog together for years, and one of them passes away. If it’s the dog, short takes from a motion picture spring to mind. The man is in his efficiency apartment. There’s a chair and an ancient blocky TV set, an unmade bed, a water bowl on the floor, and a leash on the kitchen counter. There’s sad music maybe from the Moody Blues as the man empties the bowl in the sink and throws away the leash.
If it’s the man, the story perhaps becomes more complex: The dog stays by his late master. The rescue people eventually come. They take the old man away on a gurney and one of the EMTs adopts the dog. The EMT’s daughter loves the aging animal. It spends the rest of its life comfortable and ensconced in a warm suburban home, being handfed Kibbles. Or the EMT doesn’t like dogs; he was bitten by a Lassie collie as a kid and never forgave the entire canine species. He calls the animal shelter. The dog, old and unattractive, is euthanized.
Endless permutations.
I felt sorry for the now dogless old man and wondered if he might go to the pound and get another companion. Probably not, I decided. Another animal would need training, and after eight hours of chasing and retrieving shopping carts, the old man would be too tired to teach a new dog old tricks. So the old man would end up alone in an apartment where the phone never rings, eating minimum wage baked beans with a plastic fork from a can. Terribly sad, really, and completely fictional.
One of the issues with writing—or perhaps it’s really not a problem at all—is that everything is a story. An overheard conversation becomes a dialogue with a plot. Someone else’s consternation is a play in the making. A poem or song springs half-written from an eavesdropped comment. I recently wrote a story on manhole covers simply because one I was standing on had striking design (plus, it moved under my feet. You’ll have to read the story.) Truly, it never ends. I’m pretty sure writers see and hear things differently from others. We attach great meaning to the meaningless, and this sometimes makes spoken conversation difficult. My friend Arielle, with whom I have many co-writing projects, occasionally accuses me of being incapable of finishing one thought before I launch another. I have been known to interrupt myself.
But back to the man who buried a dog.
I have a cat. We’re both getting older. When we meet in the morning, there’s an unspoken conversation.
Me: “Hey. You’re still alive. Good.”
Cat: “Yeah. You’re alive too. Feed me.”
So maybe it’s not that complex after all.
I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
April 11, 2016
Rats and Shakespeare
Rats. I had told myself I wouldn’t write about medical stuff for a while, but after spending a little too much time at the lab giving bodily fluids, tomorrow’s surgical procedure is on my mind.
Today I will sweep the kitchen stoop, dust bookshelves, and vacuum the living room and under the bed where there’s enough discarded fur to make a spare cat. I will empty the trash; scrub out the toilet bowl and Ajax the sink. I will do laundry and shove clean clothes in the appropriate drawers. I will find things to read, or more likely reread.
My small cleaning frenzy is ridiculous and necessary. Call it the clean-underwear-in-case-of-an-accident syndrome. On the very off-chance of an unfortunate event during surgery, I want to make sure my home is presentable. This is something handed down from mother to son, a ceremony performed prior to each procedure. As a familiar ritual, it has proven successful. If I clean the house thoroughly, I will return to it healthy and enjoy it.
A friend has promised to come and bake things so the place will smell good. We have decided on potatoes because having not eaten for a while, I will be hungry.
I remain scared and the fright angers me. There’s a small ball of dark anticipation in the pit of my stomach. I hate the depersonalized medicine practiced these days. There will be a host of anonymous nurses and aides and surgeons asking the same question over and over and not listening to my answers. I will tell an indifferent anesthesiologist that I metabolize drugs more rapidly than most patients he’s encountered. I will say I would rather not wake up in the middle of the surgery, as has happened twice before when I was not dosed properly. A couple of year ago, I got into an argument with the anesthesiologist who told me it was all in my mind. I said no, it’s all in my liver, the organ that deals with handling drugs of all kinds and, in my case, goes through substances like a house afire. It was a fruitless argument. She took notes, shook her head and walked off. I abhor the entire process—the IVs in my left hand, the heart monitor, the tube in my throat, the catheter, and mostly that horrendous feeling of What Has Just Happened? that surfaces as the anesthetic wears off. I am having a difficult time keeping a tenuous hold on gratitude. All this is meant to heal, not harm.
Every time I go through this, I feel a little less human afterwards, a lot less attractive and capable, a tad less confident and sure of myself in all areas of my life. There’s a sense of not being whole and am I persuaded it shows. This recurring mini-drama is getting boring to one and all. A friend recently pointed out that after all the surgical episodes, I may be losing optimism about the eventual outcome of all this. I suspect there is more truth to this than I want to admit.
I will leave the clinic in a haze, hardly remembering what the surgeon has told me post-op. I am also likely to say stupid things as the anesthetic fully wears off, to the great glee of the friends driving me home.
Goodness! Have to remember to empty the bathroom wastebasket; not doing so would invalidate the entire ritual! And what’s this? A tomato-paste stain from the last time I made pasta. Out! Damned spot! Out, I say! Yes, I’ve been spending time with a Shakespearean actor. (In French, it’s considered inelegant to quote Molière. In English, it’s Shakespeare…)
The good part is that by this time next week, thing will be fine. I know the associated discomfort of chemo and can live with that easily.
By this time next week, everything will be back to normal and there will be no need to write about this for a while. That will be very good.
I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
April 10, 2016
Anne Shirk
My friend Anne died yesterday. She was a lady of the old school, proud and upright in the face of illness, generous and kind, and forthright in bearing and opinion.
I met Anne some fifteen years ago. Like many women of her time, she smoked like a chimney back then. She liked to refer to herself as a “tough old broad,” and had a laugh that went from cackle to guffaw. She smiled a lot.
Anne was the last director of IVS, the International Volunteer Services, an NGO that sent young men and women to developing countries to assist locals in largely agricultural and irrigation projects. IVS was the model for the Peace Corps. Anne was an indefatigable promoter of her organization, which was largely apolitical though there were heated moments among volunteers during the Vietnam War.
Three years ago she decided she wanted to have a book written about the people with whom she had served. She asked me if I’d be interested in writing it and I anticipated a three-month assignment. Dozens of former volunteers sent in their recollections, and I spent more than two years editing these and stitching them together under her tutelage and that of three other former IVSers. I called them The Gang of Four, which she knew from the first and found somewhat accurate and amusing.
The initial plan was for a brief book with some photos, to be self-published and distributed from one of the Gang’s basement. The end result was The Fortunate Few, IVS Volunteers from Asia to the Andes, 370 pages put out by NCNM Press and available on Amazon. It’s a good book that will be around for a while and commemorates the work of people who should not be forgotten.
While the book was being put together, Anne and I would go to lunch once or twice a month. As she became frailer, she would grab my arm and lean on me, fearful of missteps, and carping a bit but never too much about growing physical limitations. She was a student of history who had served overseas with her husband and family, and we exchanged travel stories.. She almost always picked up the check. “I like to help impoverished writers,” she’d say, and I learned in time that she really did mean that.
Up until the very end, she drove her Toyota, sometimes haphazardly, and met the dangerous challenge of backing out of my driveway. Sometimes I closed my eyes as she did so, persuaded the end was imminent.
Anne was widowed many years ago and lived alone in a large house not far from my home. She was incredibly proud of her children and their accomplishments. She thought her kids were the smartest and most talented in the world and was never embarrassed to say so. The family was center and nexus of her life.
I’ll miss her. She was among the last of a fast-disappearing generation forged by World War II and strengthened by adversity, and she was my friend. Thank you Anne, and rest in peace.
I met Anne some fifteen years ago. Like many women of her time, she smoked like a chimney back then. She liked to refer to herself as a “tough old broad,” and had a laugh that went from cackle to guffaw. She smiled a lot.
Anne was the last director of IVS, the International Volunteer Services, an NGO that sent young men and women to developing countries to assist locals in largely agricultural and irrigation projects. IVS was the model for the Peace Corps. Anne was an indefatigable promoter of her organization, which was largely apolitical though there were heated moments among volunteers during the Vietnam War.
Three years ago she decided she wanted to have a book written about the people with whom she had served. She asked me if I’d be interested in writing it and I anticipated a three-month assignment. Dozens of former volunteers sent in their recollections, and I spent more than two years editing these and stitching them together under her tutelage and that of three other former IVSers. I called them The Gang of Four, which she knew from the first and found somewhat accurate and amusing.
The initial plan was for a brief book with some photos, to be self-published and distributed from one of the Gang’s basement. The end result was The Fortunate Few, IVS Volunteers from Asia to the Andes, 370 pages put out by NCNM Press and available on Amazon. It’s a good book that will be around for a while and commemorates the work of people who should not be forgotten.
While the book was being put together, Anne and I would go to lunch once or twice a month. As she became frailer, she would grab my arm and lean on me, fearful of missteps, and carping a bit but never too much about growing physical limitations. She was a student of history who had served overseas with her husband and family, and we exchanged travel stories.. She almost always picked up the check. “I like to help impoverished writers,” she’d say, and I learned in time that she really did mean that.
Up until the very end, she drove her Toyota, sometimes haphazardly, and met the dangerous challenge of backing out of my driveway. Sometimes I closed my eyes as she did so, persuaded the end was imminent.
Anne was widowed many years ago and lived alone in a large house not far from my home. She was incredibly proud of her children and their accomplishments. She thought her kids were the smartest and most talented in the world and was never embarrassed to say so. The family was center and nexus of her life.
I’ll miss her. She was among the last of a fast-disappearing generation forged by World War II and strengthened by adversity, and she was my friend. Thank you Anne, and rest in peace.
April 7, 2016
Rejection
In the past few days, I have been a model of productivity and efficiency.
I have written and edited, cleaned and laundered, visited friends in the hospital and wished bon voyage to folks going overseas. I have gone to the gym and had fun, as I was told to do. I have fixed things—a showerhead that sprayed liberally but not where it was supposed to; a balky space heater; a bookshelf bent on collapsing under the weight of a three volume dictionary from the 1880.
I have queried and waited. And waited. And waited.
Querying is a writer’s misery.
In the past couple of decades, some strange malady has come to affect editors, agents and others in the publishing industry. They have lost all sense of basic courtesy and respect for writers. They no longer bother to respond to queries. They are too busy, they say, overwhelmed by the sheer weight of demands placed upon them by novelists and poets and essayists trying to place work. Nowadays a writer is told that if the query does not get a response within ten days, or thirty days, or three months, well, screw you, we’re not interested.
This amazes me. It’s as if the glue that for decades has held the publishing together has dissolved.
I’m used to not having phone calls returned by people I want to interview, particularly if the interviewee is unsure of the interviewer’s motives. There was a time when, working for a major newspaper, my calls were not necessarily welcomed, and chasing someone down for a quote was part and parcel of the job. Now, however, I’m one of those writers who does unthreatening pieces, and I can still spend days chasing a source who would benefit from my writing.
Not too long ago, I met a man who said he was desperate for stories to fill his new magazine. Great! I sent queries. No response. I called. No callback. I wafted emails aloft and finally, in sheer desperation, sent an actual paper letter with story suggestions, on stationery that declared me a writer and editor, in case there was doubt. A few weeks ago, an editor was enthused about a food piece I proposed writing. Did I have photos? Yes. Recipes? Yes. Great and grand, the editor said, and that was the last time I heard from her.
I’ve noticed a proliferation of small online magazines, thousands of them, quite literally, that offer new writers a non-paying venue. Unfortunately, even those often don’t bother replying to authors directly, and frequently rely on dedicated websites such as Submittable.com to handle the rejections they issue.
The actual physical act of writing, I know, has gotten easier. I wrote my first book on a manual typewriter and literally cut and pasted pages together with Scotch tape. It took some fortitude to put a book together, to type and retype and use bottles of Wite-Out, and this, of course, was a step up from a century earlier when books were written entirely in longhand with pen and ink. I sent five-pound manuscripts by mail to editors in major houses who responded—mostly by saying ‘no, thank you’—and occasionally commented on my draft suggesting changes that might better my chances to get published.
I suppose you could call it the depersonalization of writing…
No doubt in recent years there’s been an explosion of creativity. Word processing has facilitated writing immensely, and the next generation of word-to-screen software promises to make it easier for anyone to dictate their deathless prose. Computerization, sadly, has also led to initiatives like NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which encourage people to write by weight and flood the market with stuff that, realistically, should for the most part never see the light of day (I’m going to get a lot of grief for this statement, but I recall an agent telling me he was tempted to close his office in December, knowing he’ll receive poundes of NaNoWriMo manuscripts.)
Over the years I have gathered hundreds of actual rejection slips on notes embossed with the editors’ names. One, which I kept and someway will frame, suggested I never write again. That magazine has gone out of business, so I am justified in chanting neener neener neener. Many of the others, though, bore handwritten notes offering encouragement.
I seldom see that anymore from publishers, editors or agents. Most simply don’t bother with a reply, and that’s a shame. Somewhere, a superlative writer just put down his or her pen for the last time, discouraged by the dearth of response, and that’s too bad. We need more and better writers.
I have written and edited, cleaned and laundered, visited friends in the hospital and wished bon voyage to folks going overseas. I have gone to the gym and had fun, as I was told to do. I have fixed things—a showerhead that sprayed liberally but not where it was supposed to; a balky space heater; a bookshelf bent on collapsing under the weight of a three volume dictionary from the 1880.
I have queried and waited. And waited. And waited.
Querying is a writer’s misery.
In the past couple of decades, some strange malady has come to affect editors, agents and others in the publishing industry. They have lost all sense of basic courtesy and respect for writers. They no longer bother to respond to queries. They are too busy, they say, overwhelmed by the sheer weight of demands placed upon them by novelists and poets and essayists trying to place work. Nowadays a writer is told that if the query does not get a response within ten days, or thirty days, or three months, well, screw you, we’re not interested.
This amazes me. It’s as if the glue that for decades has held the publishing together has dissolved.
I’m used to not having phone calls returned by people I want to interview, particularly if the interviewee is unsure of the interviewer’s motives. There was a time when, working for a major newspaper, my calls were not necessarily welcomed, and chasing someone down for a quote was part and parcel of the job. Now, however, I’m one of those writers who does unthreatening pieces, and I can still spend days chasing a source who would benefit from my writing.
Not too long ago, I met a man who said he was desperate for stories to fill his new magazine. Great! I sent queries. No response. I called. No callback. I wafted emails aloft and finally, in sheer desperation, sent an actual paper letter with story suggestions, on stationery that declared me a writer and editor, in case there was doubt. A few weeks ago, an editor was enthused about a food piece I proposed writing. Did I have photos? Yes. Recipes? Yes. Great and grand, the editor said, and that was the last time I heard from her.
I’ve noticed a proliferation of small online magazines, thousands of them, quite literally, that offer new writers a non-paying venue. Unfortunately, even those often don’t bother replying to authors directly, and frequently rely on dedicated websites such as Submittable.com to handle the rejections they issue.
The actual physical act of writing, I know, has gotten easier. I wrote my first book on a manual typewriter and literally cut and pasted pages together with Scotch tape. It took some fortitude to put a book together, to type and retype and use bottles of Wite-Out, and this, of course, was a step up from a century earlier when books were written entirely in longhand with pen and ink. I sent five-pound manuscripts by mail to editors in major houses who responded—mostly by saying ‘no, thank you’—and occasionally commented on my draft suggesting changes that might better my chances to get published.
I suppose you could call it the depersonalization of writing…
No doubt in recent years there’s been an explosion of creativity. Word processing has facilitated writing immensely, and the next generation of word-to-screen software promises to make it easier for anyone to dictate their deathless prose. Computerization, sadly, has also led to initiatives like NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which encourage people to write by weight and flood the market with stuff that, realistically, should for the most part never see the light of day (I’m going to get a lot of grief for this statement, but I recall an agent telling me he was tempted to close his office in December, knowing he’ll receive poundes of NaNoWriMo manuscripts.)
Over the years I have gathered hundreds of actual rejection slips on notes embossed with the editors’ names. One, which I kept and someway will frame, suggested I never write again. That magazine has gone out of business, so I am justified in chanting neener neener neener. Many of the others, though, bore handwritten notes offering encouragement.
I seldom see that anymore from publishers, editors or agents. Most simply don’t bother with a reply, and that’s a shame. Somewhere, a superlative writer just put down his or her pen for the last time, discouraged by the dearth of response, and that’s too bad. We need more and better writers.
Rejections
In the past few days, I have been a model of productivity and efficiency.
I have written and edited, cleaned and laundered, visited friends in the hospital and wished bon voyage to folks going overseas. I have gone to the gym and had fun, as I was told to do. I have fixed things—a showerhead that sprayed liberally but not where it was supposed to; a balky space heater; a bookshelf bent on collapsing under the weight of a three volume dictionary from the 1880.
I have queried and waited. And waited. And waited.
Querying is a writer’s misery.
In the past couple of decades, some strange malady has come to affect editors, agents and others in the publishing industry. They have lost all sense of basic courtesy and respect for writers. They no longer bother to respond to queries. They are too busy, they say, overwhelmed by the sheer weight of demands placed upon them by novelists and poets and essayists trying to place work. Nowadays a writer is told that if the query does not get a response within ten days, or thirty days, or three months, well, screw you, we’re not interested.
This amazes me. It’s as if the glue that for decades has held the publishing together has dissolved.
I’m used to not having phone calls returned by people I want to interview, particularly if the interviewee is unsure of the interviewer’s motives. There was a time when, working for a major newspaper, my calls were not necessarily welcomed, and chasing someone down for a quote was part and parcel of the job. Now, however, I’m one of those writers who does unthreatening pieces, and I can still spend days chasing a source who would benefit from my writing.
Not too long ago, I met a man who said he was desperate for stories to fill his new magazine. Great! I sent queries. No response. I called. No callback. I wafted emails aloft and finally, in sheer desperation, sent an actual paper letter with story suggestions, on stationery that declared me a writer and editor, in case there was doubt. A few weeks ago, an editor was enthused about a food piece I proposed writing. Did I have photos? Yes. Recipes? Yes. Great and grand, the editor said, and that was the last time I heard from her.
I’ve noticed a proliferation of small online magazines, thousands of them, quite literally, that offer new writers a non-paying venue. Unfortunately, even those often don’t bother replying to authors directly, and frequently rely on dedicated websites such as Submittable.com to handle the rejections they issue.
The actual physical act of writing, I know, has gotten easier. I wrote my first book on a manual typewriter and literally cut and pasted pages together with Scotch tape. It took some fortitude to put a book together, to type and retype and use bottles of Wite-Out, and this, of course, was a step up from a century earlier when books were written entirely in longhand with pen and ink. I sent five-pound manuscripts by mail to editors in major houses who responded—mostly by saying ‘no, thank you’—and occasionally commented on my draft suggesting changes that might better my chances to get published.
I suppose you could call it the depersonalization of writing…
No doubt in recent years there’s been an explosion of creativity. Word processing has facilitated writing immensely, and the next generation of word-to-screen software promises to make it easier for anyone to dictate their deathless prose. Computerization, sadly, has also led to initiatives like NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which encourage people to write by weight and flood the market with stuff that, realistically, should for the most part never see the light of day (I’m going to get a lot of grief for this statement, but I recall an agent telling me he was tempted to close his office in December, knowing he’ll receive poundes of NaNoWriMo manuscripts.)
Over the years I have gathered hundreds of actual rejection slips on notes embossed with the editors’ names. One, which I kept and someway will frame, suggested I never write again. That magazine has gone out of business, so I am justified in chanting neener neener neener. Many of the others, though, bore handwritten notes offering encouragement.
I seldom see that anymore from publishers, editors or agents. Most simply don’t bother with a reply, and that’s a shame. Somewhere, a superlative writer just put down his or her pen for the last time, discouraged by the dearth of response, and that’s too bad. We need more and better writers.
I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
April 5, 2016
Seidman/Sagnier
I’ve long been fascinated by language, words, and communications as a whole. More recently (which for me is sometimes in the past couple of decades) I’ve become fascinated with the different ways different people communicate—men, women, children, people from this country and others, young people with older ones and vice versa—and I decided I wanted to explore this subject in more depth.
Enter Arielle Seidman. Arielle doesn’t sleep or eat. She juggles an infinite number of chainsaws, including the Britches and Hose Theater Company, and she’s very, very smart. She also is quite opposed to many notions I hold dear. She detests generalizations. The idea that genders speak differently makes her dangerously vociferous. She dislikes sugarcoating. I could go on but won’t.
We argue a lot, often somewhat vehemently. We’ve also found that despite a pretty radical age difference, we’re kindred spirits.
So we’ve begun writing together. We’ve put up a new website, seidmansagnier.com that I’m very happy with because it’s the sort of site I wish there were more of on the net.
We’ll update daily with discussions, flash and other fiction, some spoken word essays and whatever else may catch our fancy. Suggestions are welcome, as are comments. Help us grow, please!
Thank you. Thierry
Enter Arielle Seidman. Arielle doesn’t sleep or eat. She juggles an infinite number of chainsaws, including the Britches and Hose Theater Company, and she’s very, very smart. She also is quite opposed to many notions I hold dear. She detests generalizations. The idea that genders speak differently makes her dangerously vociferous. She dislikes sugarcoating. I could go on but won’t.
We argue a lot, often somewhat vehemently. We’ve also found that despite a pretty radical age difference, we’re kindred spirits.
So we’ve begun writing together. We’ve put up a new website, seidmansagnier.com that I’m very happy with because it’s the sort of site I wish there were more of on the net.
We’ll update daily with discussions, flash and other fiction, some spoken word essays and whatever else may catch our fancy. Suggestions are welcome, as are comments. Help us grow, please!
Thank you. Thierry
April 1, 2016
Test Post, Take 3
This is genuinely terrible. TERRIBLE. I need a new system for updating my blogs. Also I really need a new keyboard. Also my tech person deserves a cookie, or something, because this is beyond reasonable patience. I'm just saying.
Thank you for your patience. I'm sure we're almost done. Probably. I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
Thank you for your patience. I'm sure we're almost done. Probably. I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
March 30, 2016
Maury's Chair
When Maury came to the coffee shop this morning, he found his regular chair in front of the fireplace taken by a slim older man wearing a baseball cap and reading the Post.
Maury stood stock still for maybe 30 seconds, and then looked at me. I was sitting in a booth a dozen feet away, peeling an orange. He caught my eye. I shrugged, a What Can You Do? message. He made a face and bobbed his head.
He went outside and, as he usually does, began picking scraps of paper from the sidewalk and putting them in a city trash can. There’s a new crop of litter every morning, and Maury sees it as his job to tend to it.
He returned five minutes later. The slim man was still there. Maury filled his coffee mug, came to my table, smiled crookedly and asked, “How’s the cancer?”
That’s an unusual question, but not from Maury, who once suggested I start dating a woman whose boyfriend had just died. “Okay, I guess,” I said, but Maury wasn’t listening. The man in his chair was stirring, perhaps preparing to go.
“Good,” said Maury. “That’s good.” The man in the chair did not leave but instead picked up the Post Metro section. Maury sighed, left his coffee cup on my table and headed for the men’s room.
While he was there, the slim man packed up his newspaper and left. As soon as he did, another coffee shop regular slid into Maury’s chair.
Maury returned from the bathroom and paid scant attention to the new usurper. He asked me, “So the cancer’s good?” Then he added, “Not peeing blood, I hope.”
Um. Where does Maury get his info? I KNOW I never mentioned the particulars of my case to him. I said, “Why do you ask?”
Maury pulled a chair to my table even though the booth bench across from me was vacant. “I peed blood once, for a week,” Maury said. “I went to see the doctor and he said it was a yutee.”
“Pardon?”
“A yutee. A urinary tract infection. He gave me pills. I peed bright orange for a while; it was strange. But the yutee went away.”
I offered him half my orange. He took it and carefully separated the wedges, then lifted off the white stuff that sticks even after the fruit is peeled.
He ate… mournfully is the only word I can come up with. His eyes were beagle sad and his jaw worked methodically. Between wedges he said, “I was really scared” (chew chew) the first time it happened (chew chew). The peeing, I mean (chew swallow). I thought I was maybe dying (chew chew), but I wasn’t.”
When he was through with the orange, he took a sip of coffee and wiped his mouth with a napkin. He looked at me and asked, “Are you scared?”
I said I was, sort of.
The man in Maury’s chair got up. Maury made to hurry there but stopped. He patted me on the shoulder, gave my arm a gentle squeeze. “Don’t be,” he said. “It’s gonna be all right.”
He settled into his chair, put his feet up on the fireplace lintel, and gave me a thumb up.
Everything’s gonna be all right.
Maury stood stock still for maybe 30 seconds, and then looked at me. I was sitting in a booth a dozen feet away, peeling an orange. He caught my eye. I shrugged, a What Can You Do? message. He made a face and bobbed his head.
He went outside and, as he usually does, began picking scraps of paper from the sidewalk and putting them in a city trash can. There’s a new crop of litter every morning, and Maury sees it as his job to tend to it.
He returned five minutes later. The slim man was still there. Maury filled his coffee mug, came to my table, smiled crookedly and asked, “How’s the cancer?”
That’s an unusual question, but not from Maury, who once suggested I start dating a woman whose boyfriend had just died. “Okay, I guess,” I said, but Maury wasn’t listening. The man in his chair was stirring, perhaps preparing to go.
“Good,” said Maury. “That’s good.” The man in the chair did not leave but instead picked up the Post Metro section. Maury sighed, left his coffee cup on my table and headed for the men’s room.
While he was there, the slim man packed up his newspaper and left. As soon as he did, another coffee shop regular slid into Maury’s chair.
Maury returned from the bathroom and paid scant attention to the new usurper. He asked me, “So the cancer’s good?” Then he added, “Not peeing blood, I hope.”
Um. Where does Maury get his info? I KNOW I never mentioned the particulars of my case to him. I said, “Why do you ask?”
Maury pulled a chair to my table even though the booth bench across from me was vacant. “I peed blood once, for a week,” Maury said. “I went to see the doctor and he said it was a yutee.”
“Pardon?”
“A yutee. A urinary tract infection. He gave me pills. I peed bright orange for a while; it was strange. But the yutee went away.”
I offered him half my orange. He took it and carefully separated the wedges, then lifted off the white stuff that sticks even after the fruit is peeled.
He ate… mournfully is the only word I can come up with. His eyes were beagle sad and his jaw worked methodically. Between wedges he said, “I was really scared” (chew chew) the first time it happened (chew chew). The peeing, I mean (chew swallow). I thought I was maybe dying (chew chew), but I wasn’t.”
When he was through with the orange, he took a sip of coffee and wiped his mouth with a napkin. He looked at me and asked, “Are you scared?”
I said I was, sort of.
The man in Maury’s chair got up. Maury made to hurry there but stopped. He patted me on the shoulder, gave my arm a gentle squeeze. “Don’t be,” he said. “It’s gonna be all right.”
He settled into his chair, put his feet up on the fireplace lintel, and gave me a thumb up.
Everything’s gonna be all right.
March 28, 2016
Um...
A few years ago shortly after I was diagnosed, I went with a friend to the National Book Festival which at the time was held on the Mall in Washington, DC. Earlier that week, still shaky from the news that I’d contracted bladder cancer, I’d Googled a list of first-person cancer books and was astonished when hundreds upon hundreds of titles came up. I joked to my friend that soon there would probably be a National Cancer Book Festival featuring all the authors autographing their works. There would be roundtables and discussions and posters and tee-shirts and seminars and coffee mugs and we would have a grand time. The Mall would barely be able to hold all the tents and tables. My friend asked if I would write a personal experience book and I demurred. Occasional blogs, yes. A book, no. Too much competition in that particular field and, let’s face it, bladder cancer is simply not sexy.
I was a little blasé back then. The cancer had luckily been caught early and my doctors told me the forthcoming operation and a few courses of chemo would most probably take care of everything. Further testing, though necessary, would be pro-forma, and life would return to normal in no time at all.
Now I’m not so sure. With the tenth surgery looming, I’m a little less certain of my immortality. I have two friends struggling with the same disease, and one in particular is a man I’ve admired for years and whose erudition and humor have been an inspiration. He has now been in the hospital for weeks following surgery and an unending list of complications. I fear for his life.
I’ve also read that the many recurrences I’ve had are not a good sign. A cancer that keeps returning is one whose entrenched cells have managed to elude the best efforts of surgeons and oncologists.
Some serious scaredy-catedness is surfacing.
I’ve always accepted the theoretical concept of dying; now I’m beginning to consider its reality. There are things to take care of, unpleasant details I don’t want to attend to. I’ve updated my will and Do Not Resuscitate Order. My organ donor card is current… Jeezie peezie! What’s going to happen to all my stuff! Whoever gets my pedal steel guitar and Dobro better dammed well take good care of them!
Back when I was a kid, my mother used to recount the tale of her own grandfather, a stern and dedicated French architect named Jules Février. Jules designed and oversaw the construction of the Banque de France building in Paris, a greyish edifice with a brass plaque bearing his name. His relationship with his wife must have been tempestuous—he decorated the building’s roof with gargoyles carved in her likeness. He also kept a small book listing the people he wanted to invite to his own funeral. When there was a falling out, he’d unceremoniously scratch out the name of the disenfranchised friend or acquaintance from the guest list. Jules, one way or the other, would have the last word.
Um… I’d always thought my great-grandfather might be a bit odd. Now I’m not so sure; a brass plaque may not be unbecoming, and I like getting the last word in too.
I was a little blasé back then. The cancer had luckily been caught early and my doctors told me the forthcoming operation and a few courses of chemo would most probably take care of everything. Further testing, though necessary, would be pro-forma, and life would return to normal in no time at all.
Now I’m not so sure. With the tenth surgery looming, I’m a little less certain of my immortality. I have two friends struggling with the same disease, and one in particular is a man I’ve admired for years and whose erudition and humor have been an inspiration. He has now been in the hospital for weeks following surgery and an unending list of complications. I fear for his life.
I’ve also read that the many recurrences I’ve had are not a good sign. A cancer that keeps returning is one whose entrenched cells have managed to elude the best efforts of surgeons and oncologists.
Some serious scaredy-catedness is surfacing.
I’ve always accepted the theoretical concept of dying; now I’m beginning to consider its reality. There are things to take care of, unpleasant details I don’t want to attend to. I’ve updated my will and Do Not Resuscitate Order. My organ donor card is current… Jeezie peezie! What’s going to happen to all my stuff! Whoever gets my pedal steel guitar and Dobro better dammed well take good care of them!
Back when I was a kid, my mother used to recount the tale of her own grandfather, a stern and dedicated French architect named Jules Février. Jules designed and oversaw the construction of the Banque de France building in Paris, a greyish edifice with a brass plaque bearing his name. His relationship with his wife must have been tempestuous—he decorated the building’s roof with gargoyles carved in her likeness. He also kept a small book listing the people he wanted to invite to his own funeral. When there was a falling out, he’d unceremoniously scratch out the name of the disenfranchised friend or acquaintance from the guest list. Jules, one way or the other, would have the last word.
Um… I’d always thought my great-grandfather might be a bit odd. Now I’m not so sure; a brass plaque may not be unbecoming, and I like getting the last word in too.
