Misc: More Fun at Work

Heard over the fire safety loudspeaker: "Due to construction workers in the building, you may notice an odor."

Misc: Fun at Work

So, because I don't (yet?) make a living at the freelance writing, I have a fulltime desk-jockey job doing legal word processing for a big corporate law firm in Midtown. It's relatively painless in a McJob kind of way, but it wears down the old creativity after awhile, so I've been known to use unconventional methods to try and head-trip myself into thinking I'm doing something else. Before last fall's trip to Disney World I would listen to ride soundtracks on the subway so I could feel like I was on a ride. When I got back, I brought in my monkey-head coconut from the Polynesian Hotel luau to drink my water out of. Recently that's gotten kind of tired, so I've started listening to James Bond soundtracks on my way into the building so I can think that I might kill someone while I'm there. It's far more interesting to come into a Manhattan high-rise when you're infiltrating it than when you're just coming to edit contracts.

Reading: Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties by Marion Meade looks at the years from 1920 to 1930 through the lives of four professional female writers: Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber.

I didn't know Zelda Fitzgerald was a professional in her own time but it seems she wrote both articles and short stories that were published under her name together with Scott's and earned a reasonable chunk of change thereby. Scott himself would alternately bristle and scoff when Zelda described herself as a writer; I guess her stuff was good enough for him to put his name on but not good enough for her to derive an identity from it. Or something. Truth be told, I can't read about Zelda Fitzgerald without intense frustration, because she's so hyperfeminine that she gets my back up but her husband was such a piece of work that I can't help being on her side when sides are being picked.

Edna Ferber was the only one of the four about whom I'd never read and I left wanting more because she seems to have been the only one who "survived," in a way. She died in 1968 at the age of 82 in her own home and unmarried. The Amazon review says she suffers in comparison with her more colorful colleagues but compared to the needy, suicidal Parker and the perpetually adolescent Millay, not to mention Zelda Fitzgerald who died at 47 in a mental home -- well, the best stories don't always make the happiest lives, evidently. There's a moral in there somewhere.

Knitting: Uh Oh

I can go on for months deluding myself that I merely dabble in knitting until something occurs to warn me that I will swiftly become a Knitter with a capital Kn if I don't watch out.

Yesterday on the subway I earned my Knitting Scout Obsessive's Badge when a small girl of about three got on the uptown F train with her dad. She was riding one of those little pedal-cars that turn into strollers by the addition of a long pole manipulated by the aforementioned dad; she had a tangle of blonde curls on her head and a pair of amusing sunglasses on her face; around her neck was a handknitted scarf like autumn itself spun into gossamer silk.

I looked at this picture of precious, whimsical youth, tended with loving care, and I thought: "Well, if it isn't Crystal Palace Splash in the Turning Leaves colorway. I wonder how long it took to knit?"

Misc: Erfolgtraurigkeit

It's the opposite of Schadenfreude, according to the coinage of David Baddiel in the Times of London in the fall of 2005: success-sadness, the feeling described by Gore Vidal when he wrote: "Whenever a friend of mine succeeds, a little something in me dies." Consider it a gift from me to those of you for whom such a concept would be useful. Come on; I know you're out there.

I can't be the only person who has one acquaintance by whose unremitting success I can always be kept humble no matter what I accomplish. In my case it's an old college friend who I'm not going to identify even by gender, although anyone who knew me in college will immediately know who I'm talking about since this person was clearly branded in gold on the forehead from the day said person was born. The person has everything he/she has ever wished for to my knowledge: a fulfilling career in the arts without the concomitant hassle of fame; a spouse and career partner of more than a decade's mellow vintage; a young child whose rearing will never curtail the aforesaid career in the arts due to the unparalleled free childcare provided by its grandmother; homeownership in quite an expensive area of a very expensive city.

Does it turn your stomach like it turns mine? It gets worse. Due to talent, diligence, confidence and intelligence, this horrible person deserves every bit of it. It makes me want to chew off my own ears.

Misc: 2007 Goals

Since my keynote 2006 accomplishments were quitting my novel, losing my cat and gaining eight unneeded pounds, my substantive goal for the coming year is the modest one of not doing anything worse.

On a separate but related note, of the seven things I either knit or attempted to knit for Christmas presents, only one turned out exactly as I had planned. I'm told that's part of the fascination of knitting, but I have my own opinion about that.

I will say for the Christmas knitting, however, that I knit about ten miles of alpaca and I'm still not sick of it. Mohair did not stand up to this test, so I think I've found my new pet fiber.