Goodbye, The End, Finis

Today, December 13, 2009, is the fifth anniversary of ByJane. And today is also it’s swan song. Those of you who check in from time to time know that I’ve only been posting from time to time. And when I do, I generally cross-post to MidLifeBloggers--which seems like a waste of, well not paper, but bytes...or something.

And too, the kind of posts I did for ByJane seemed a bit too casual for MidLifeBloggers. With ByJane, I just wrote--whatever. Sometimes I would start in one place and end up in a totally different direction. But that was the fun of it. That is, actually, what blogging is about, at least to my mind. That’s not what MidLifeBloggers is about. When I choose posts to put up, I’m looking for what are basically non-fiction essays. They have a beginning, a middle and an end. They make a point, and they use some or all of the tools of literary writing to do so.

Still I miss writing those casual, personal posts, but all of my energies these days are going into MidLifeBloggers. That’s where I’m doing the social media dance that one does to build an audience. It’s where I’ve got plans and intentions and goals and dreams and--well, you know. So I’m saying goodbye to ByJane as the blog exists in this incarnation. This will be my last post at this url. But because I miss blogging and because I still want to do that meandering personal kind of writing, I’m officially folding ByJane in to MidLifeBloggers. There’s a sweet spot on the sidebar where you can read ByJane; you’ll just have to go to MidLifeBloggers to do it.

DeMille Dwellings: The Guy Who Lives In The Garage.

He prowls at night, that I know because I see him when I'm taking my garbage out. The first couple of times, he scared the living bejesus out of me. It was a dark and stormy November night…. (no, actually, it was April. I told you I have a weird predilection for overplay when it comes to language).


Whatever--it was night and dark and I was out back dumping my trash. This being an apartment complex of sorts, we don't have normal cans. We have the supersize bins with the lids that require brute strength to tip up. The kind where bodies and hacked limbs are being found. Every week the garbage master comes around with his huge truck, from which he thrusts two vicious metal prongs into slots in the bottom of the dumpster, which is then hauled up skyward until it is just hovering over the gaping maw of the truck, when the lid flies open and there is an avalanche of big black bags and medium white bags and little beige bags from the grocery stores along with tiny bags of dog shit and candy wrappers and snot rags and rubbers (the condom kind) and the aforementioned body parts and who knows what else, and then ever so gently, like a tender lover after he's finished, the metal prongs move the bin down, down, down until it is resettled on the ground and the prongs recede and the truck drives away and that is garbage collection for another week.


The Guy who Lives in the Garage watches TV on a 5" portable he's spliced into one of the fuse boxes out back. I've watched him watching. He's partial to I Love Lucy reruns and he seems to lose himself in them. He'll hunch forward on his chair as if to get right into the screen. When the payoff comes, he'll scoot back and throw his head up and his laugh both looks and sounds like a braying donkey.


Last night he entertained a guest down there. It was The Waif from across the way. She's a pathetic little creature who barely has the energy to breath vital air. She's all promise and no realization.

DeMille Dwellings: The Narrator

You are probably wondering about me. Who I am. What my story is. And so you should. But you'll find that I'm far less forthcoming about myself than I am in my opinions of others. Perhaps it's that I know myself and therefore know the complexity that underlies all of us. I can reduce the others to if not caricatures, then exemplars of a type. I can't do that to myself; there are too many ifs, and, buts, and maybes to simplify my own self-portrait. So you will have to discover me on your own and perhaps in the end, that's what I'm wanting you to do. For me. So that I can know as well.

Telling the Truth

I'm searching for a quote by William Faulkner. You know, the one about memory and ways of looking at a blackbird and the past never really being past. Except I think I'm conflating at least three of Faulkner's most famous lines. I want to find it because today I wrote this:

Every family has their own story, the tale they tell the world about who they are and what they stand for and where they’re going or not. And every member of every family has their own version. As Faulkner said, “….” So too if you added up all the versions of each family member, you would get something perhaps approximating the truth.

This is my version of my family’s story. I call it “Washing Dirty Linen” because that is what my mother was zealous that we never do: wash our dirty linen in public. Bare our secrets. Tell our truths. But she’s gone now and so is my father, so there’s no one left who I care about protecting.

I've been thinking about this for a long time. But maybe not long enough to be able to actually write it. Maybe my mother hasn't been dead long enough, although it's now been nine years. The long arm of Libby Lee may, in fact, be capable of reaching far beyond the grave--and she would like that. That arm is doing what it did so often in the past, reaching under the table and squeezing my knee in a vise-like grip: Silence. Quiet. Don't wash your dirty linen.

Not that our linen was really very dirty. Nothing heinous happened in my family; no secrets that would shock the world. Still, I can't really get a grip on what I want to say. I'm writing and deleting line after line, trying to capture this sense I have of--of what? Of smoke and mirrors.

Faulkner has always been my favorite author. If things had been different when I began my PhD studies, if the professor I had gone to work with, the Faulkner scholar, hadn't taken early retirement, I might be teaching Southern Literature at some university. And then surely these Faulkner quotes would be tripping off my tongue, rather than lurking somewhere in the back recesses of my memory.

My Olympics

...is purely a spectator sport. I watch, I don't know why I watch, I don't know why I'm so fascinated that I will do nothing for that two week period in the evening but watch the Olympic coverage. I know nothing about sports--any of them, really. What I do know, however, is that I could never be a contender. I don't have the mental wherewithal, never mind what my body would do. Actually, I've been told over the years by a number of independent voices that I do have an athlete's body. My father was a professional athlete, and I guess I inherited something from him. The body type, that is, but certainly not the mental goods to go along with it. The repetition that is the hallmark of a training regime--I could never do that. I would get bored; I would whine; I would come up with a million and one reasons why I couldn't train that day. I don't know how the world-class athletes can bear the sheer tedium of swimming laps again and again and again and then again. Or marathon running: that training schedule of endlessly plowing up hills and down hills, around the block and into the countryside. I understand the mentality that goes into that about as well as I understand Chinese, which is to say not at all.

In the '80s, I did a profile of Mary T. Meagher, the famous Madame Butterfly, who still, I believe, holds the Olympic record for the 200 'fly. As part of the profile, I went to training with her one day. Oh, god, the absolute tedium of it. On the blocks, into the water, 'fly the length, haul body out of the water, walk around to the blocks and get in line to do it all over again. And again. And again. All afternoon and well into the evening. I escaped about 8 p.m., and Mary T. was still at it.

You know, it just occurred to me that I probably could learn Chinese sooner than I will ever understand how these athletes do it. Maybe that's why I watch them incessantly even though I haven't a clue what they're doing. To try to get some glimmer of what it is that drives them--and doesn't drive me.

MidLifeBloggers.com: Want to Write For Us????

It's finally up, the never-definitive, ever-almost ready guide to

Writing for MidLifeBloggers.com: A How-to, Why, & When, etc. etc.

If you're a midlifeblogger and you want to write for us, this is what you need to do....Go look!

I'm a D-list Blogger with a Dilemna

...and I need to know what you think. Every once in a while I get sent something to review, a book or a film usually. I don't pretend to think it's because I have such salient wit. I know I'm just a D-list blogger and I've gotten on the rolls of some similarly-situated PR people who are hoping for that Viral Thingie to happen for their client. My problem is this: D-list PR people tend to get D-list writers for clients. That means that the works that I am sent are not so much without merit as flawed, in some cases fatally so.

Now if you know anything about me, it's that I have a rather skewed view at times. And I like to laugh. And I tend to see juxtapositions that other people don't, until I point them out. Add all that up, pour it into a flawed novel or film and you get me ripping off a series of cogent comments that are pretty darn funny. And while I'd love to write them in a review post because they are often just too, too good to go unsaid, I don't. Because I know that at the other end of that book or film is a writer. A writer who has pinned a lot of hopes and plans and ambition on the particular work. In short, someone like me.

Maybe that's why those who can do and those who can't write about it. It's not too hard to be upfront honest when you have no stake in the races yourself.

But the horns of my dilemna are these: am I faithful to my integrity as a reader or am I faithful to my loyalty to other writers? In the past, I've managed to walk a narrow path. I squelched my better bon mots, focused on what was good about the work, and alluded to some of the Problems with the text. But now I'm reading a review copy where I'm falling off the path. The intention of the writer was with merit; the realization was without. My choices, then, are:

1. Lose the book. Forget I got it. Pretend to myself that it was lost in the mail.
2. Write the truth, even though it hurts me to think of the writer reading it.
3. Do one of those la-di-dah reviews where you basically just summarize the plot.

The problem with the first is that it's a lie and believe it or not, I do have issues with lying. The problem with the second is that I end up feeling really, really bad. The problem with the third is that I sneer at critics who through ignorance or laziness end up copping out with a summary.

What would you do? What do you do?

New post up at MidLifeBloggers.

How To Be A Better Writer

I have just finished writing the fiftyeth million response to a blogger who feels she is frittering her life away on line. Okay, it wasn't the fiftyeth million, but it seems like I'm saying the same thing to a lot of people. So I'm gonna say it here too. But first, my bonafides: I have been a writing teacher. People, universities even, have paid me to teach students of all ages and capabilities to write. I've taught elderly ladies and male felons, but those are stories for another day. I tell you this so you'll know I know what I'm talking about. And believe me!

All the desire in the world won't make you a writer. For that, you have to work. And working for a writer is reading and thinking and writing and rewriting.

Blogging is just another genre of writing, not inferior or superior to any other in and of itself. You can practice writing the Great American Novel by writing on your blog. You can learn how to write by reading other's blogs. The work involved is this: when you're reading blogs, try to figure out what it is you like (or dislike) about a particular writer. Try on techniques that they use. See if you have a like-sounding voice that you can fool around in. Figure out what you don't like about a blog or a writer's voice or...or...whatever. You figure it out. Think about it.

Then, when you're writing your blog, don't just hit publish and let it go. I've had years of experience at writing fast, but I NEVER do a blog post that is first draft, final draft. I preview my drafts and reword and rewrite and--goddamit--REVISE the thing until I deem it publishable. That doesn't mean it's perfect, because God knows I'd never publish if I held myself up to that. But it does say what I want it to say clearly and in a way that makes me proud. At least for that day.

All the talk about blogging being inferior and self-indulgent is just so much hoo-hah. It's genre-ist, if I may coin a word, coming in somewhere under racist and sexist and ageist and ist-ist. Don't let Them--be they friends, family or artful critics--get away with it. Don't allow blogger to become another word that must be known only by its initial.

BlogWriters of the World--unite! Stand tall and stand proud. When you're asked what you do, answer "I'm a writer." And when the followup question is, "Oh, what do you write?" Look them in the eye and say, I publish my writing on-line. Because that's what a blog is: writing that is published on line. It's neither better than nor worse than writing that has been published on paper. It is what it is, and that's the best we can say about any creative work.

Blogging: It's Where We Get Community

In my diatribe the other day against those who get off on the Dump on Dooce bandwagon, I did not link to her site. Normally, you reference a blogger, you link to their blog--that is, I believe, the etiquette. But I didn't after thinking about it for a while for this reason: I have heard that some bloggers try to up their ante by linking to A list bloggers. It gets their stats going, I guess, not to mention their hearts. I didn't want anyone to think I was writing that WTF post defending Heather Armstrong for any collateral reason (I'm not sure that even makes sense, but I trust you will know what I mean). Thus, I left off the links. However, this post I am linking to her site, to the monthly letter she has written to her daughter. It's here; go read it. In it, Heather is answering those who criticize her and other bloggers for writing about their lives. This is the bit that I want you to get, to think about, to really know:

"I know I am not alone when I say that when I sit down to update my website I do it to connect with other people, I do it to reflect on the absurdity of everyday life with the hope that the people who read it will find similarities in their own routine. I did not know that wanting to be a part of a community qualified as egotism."

For much of the time that I've had a stat counter on ByJane, it registered an average of about thirtyfive readers a day. In the time that I've had Google and BlogHer ads on my site, I haven't seen a penny. So why do I spend so much time at my blog? Why is it the one thing I do without fail every day (okay, I brush my teeth as well)? I do it because that I have a community of readers, however few or many, means I am not hollering into the wilderness.

Life is pretty lonely these days, for all of us. If you've taken a psych or soc or polysci course, you've heard the term anomie. Our society has fragmented and our connections have frayed over the past century or so, and we are each of us left along with a very personal drive for meaning, for community. It's a human urge to search out others of the same ilk, to be not-alone. Some wrap themselves in the vestments of their work or hobby. Others find it in their church or athletics or political causes. Bloggers, particularly those of us who write about our day-to-day lives, find it on-line.

Recently I moved beyond the confines of ByJane and started a whole new community: MidLifeBloggers.com The site is barely operational now, but ultimately it will be a gathering place for all of us who consider ourselves to be in the middle of our lives. It is growing out of the same need that motivated the Mommybloggers to band together: the urge for a community that speaks to our particular interests and gives us a voice. That's what blogging is about. It's not an ego trip; it's a conversation.

WTF???!!!

In my trip round about the blogosphere today, I came across a number of posts in which the blogger was taking to task other unnamed bloggers for being critical of another unnamed blogger because she--I dunno, there was so much not naming that I couldn't really tell, but it seemed to have something to do with success, or some such thing. From all of this, which I won't link to because, well because you can easily find these posts yourself, I gather that there is a small swell,if not a tidal wave of miseryguts aimed at Heather Armstrong YET AGAIN.

There have been several well-reasoned posts written about the sin of envy and there being room at the Inn for all of us. Mine is not of the well-reasoned ilk. Mine is the fucking pissed off and disgusted genre.

Dislike someone for better reasons than that they are succeeding at something that you wish you were doing. Don't you realize how small that makes you seem, those of you who say, Oh, I just can't stand Dooce; she's so, so, whatever. I remember at Blogher'o6 after Heather's session listening to several women bitching about the fact that she had copped to feeling real anxiety that her family's well-being was a function of her being able to come up with a short essay every couple of days that would keep people entertained. God, they said, she's complaining about being successful. Give me a break. What she was doing, assholes (see I told you I was pissed off), was sharing herself with you. That's what she does in the blog. That's why so many people are regular readers. And if you're going to dislike someone simply because they're better than you, at least have the balls to admit it.

Blogging for Dollars

There's nothing like a little writing to make the insecurity meter start rising. And if it ain't about one thing, then it's about another. The NY Times helped the blogosphere out the other day by publishing an article that said basically, blog and you'll die. In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop - New York Times

God knows how many other bloggers picked up on it, but two of our midlifeblogger crew were hit: Merlot Mom and Ms Meta of Metafootnotes both wrote posts quoting the Times article. Their takes were somewhat different, but for both women, blogging is, along with the good, producing some, shall we call it, quiet anxiety. I can relate.

Why do we do what we do? Why blog? There's a huge conversation going on, some of which seems to be arriving as Tweets from Twitterers I follow, that seems to focus on the commercial promise of blogging and whether, in fact, that is its sole purpose.

I'm not immune to that argument, but I have found over the years that I've been doing this, that blogging for money is the road to ruin for me. When I have set out to make money with my blog, I have (a) failed miserably, and (b) felt, therefore, like a prize chump for even assuming I could succeed. When I keep my eye focused on communicating what I want to when I want to, then I feel good about myself and my work.

I have a blogging friend who supports his family by blogging. He's one of the guys that the NY Times article was talking about. He writes for umpteen commercial blogs. He's a stay-at-home dad and blogs about that, and he does some of those gossip blogs as well. But then there's his own blog and from time to time on that, his writer self just soars. Would that he had the luxury to let it fly all the time, but he doesn't. He has to earn a living.

I don't have to earn a living from my blog and that gives me a measure of freedom, yes. But the other thing that I don't have to earn from my blog is my sense of myself or my reputation as a writer. That's been well-established over the years and that, too, gives me a measure of freedom. It is, I guess, one of the perks of being a midlifeblogger.

I think that maybe all the talk of branding your blog or monetizing it--for a lot of people, it's just another way of saying, I matter. And for you???

A , I'm Adorable...B, I'm so Beautiful...

C, D, blah blah blah...and E, I am Excellent. So sayeth no less than Average Jane. She named me as one of her Excellent Blog Awardees. That means I get to put this on my site. And I get to swell my breast with pride, which will, of course, result in a massive bursting of buttons.

The Excellent Blog Award was started by Kayla at Project Mommy.
And in addition to sending her some linkylove, I must now annoint my own Excellent Blog Awards. They are:
Mad Marriage
Awalkabout's Weblog
Communicatrix
Death Chic
Honea Express
Jew Eat Yet?
Nanny Goats in Panties
Not What It Seems
Punk Rock Mommy
Reader
The Passing Parade
Thursday Drive

What do they all have in common? They're writerly blogs. The topic of the day doesn't matter; the quality of the prose and the depth of insight is what attracts.

Not An Afterthought, But A Forgotten Bit of Info: Awardees, you need to link to Kayla, as I did above, and then link to your own ten (or more) nominees.

What I Learned From My Last Post

1. That my regular readers were struck dumb. I can't believe it was the quality of the post--oh no, never that. Perhaps it was the quantity. I have long questioned just how long a post should be before it is too long. There are some bloggers, not present company of course, who do go on and on and on and on and on, etc. etc. ad infinitum. One might say they have bloggorhea. One might--and I just did. I suggest a firm editing hand to those bloggers, but then I thought Emerson (as in Ralph Waldo) needed a good editor. And Leibniz as well.
2. That I am not the first to remark on Chikezie's gums. "Chikezie and gums" is evidentally a relatively popular search term.
3. That another popular search is for "Amanda Overmeyer and Jewish". I don't know why, since I'd be willing to bet she isn't (mainly because Jewish girls don't ride Harley hogs) and how it is that so many people who wrote about her also wrote about some Jewish thing. I did, yes, but in two completely separate posts. Which leads one to wonder just how and where that Google worm is crawling.
4. That I needn't hit Vegas with my American Idol bets. But in all fairness, I was calculating on a popularity contest result and America, this time America did the singing thing.

On Writing...

...and Not-Writing...and why.

Because I take myself too seriously. Because I don't take myself seriously enough.

Let me explain: I take myself too seriously in that I want it to do more than mere words possibly can. I want my words to be as true to me as they possibly can be so that they can burrow into you and make you feel what I feel and see what I see. On occasion, I can manage this. When the wind is right and the stars are aligned, what's in my heart and head comes through my hands and onto the page. Then, my writing sings. I can feel it, I can see it, and I know it. Hot damn, I think, that is good. I should do that some more. But I often can't, because, as even I know, the wind and stars have wills of their own, and without them together, I'm afraid to try. This is what is know as waiting for the muse to descend, and we all know that it's the foolish person who buys into that game.

Writer's write. Every day. No matter what.

But maybe I'm not a writer. Maybe I'm just someone who has a way with words from time to time. Maybe the things that I've published are not flukes but of another time. Maybe they, and their genre, are as far as I can go. Or maybe not.

Here's what I'm scared of. That feeling of abject failure when once again another writing project has died through my inability to follow through. I get an idea, I get excited, I plan, I write and then at some point, something happens and what I have before me is a house of cards. I see it. I know it. I feel foolish for having thought it, this time, could be more than that. I cannot seem to power through that stage. I do not take myself seriously enough, perhaps, to do so.

I got started thinking this when I read a post on writing by Jennifer at Thursday Drive. She quoted a couple of writers, successful ones, who seemed to be talking about clearing out the censors when one writes. What I want to know, though, is how to clear out the censor that is me?

The Martian Has Landed: A Post About Nothing & Everything

...earth to Jane, earth to Jane....

I must confess that I have been a less than constant blogpal lately. I went away and then I came back and somehow I just couldn't work up that much interest. And looking at my stats, the feeling must be mutual. Is it me? Is it thee? I dunno. My SOM* is OK, better 'n OK I'd say--and certainly my alliterative, not to mention rhyming powers are intact. So what gives?

For one, there seems to be an awful lot of babble on the net these days. Blog babble is one thing, but Twitter babble--that's just plumb ugly annoying. You know, we have monkey minds, as the Buddhists say. Thoughts, large and small, important and inane, are forever to-ing and fro-ing through the jungle in our heads, leaping and swinging and making incessant noise. Those who practice Mindfulness (hear monks chanting; smell incense burning) work to quiet that Monkey Mind. So what's with the Twitterers who are gleefully sharing each and every leap and swing, burble and belch with those of us who for whatever reason are their Followers (you asked me; you like me; you really like me). They must be practicing Unmindfulness.

I could work myself into a whole rant about this, but then I'd probably insult people, and, jeeze, that's not something I ever want to do. At least not on purpose. Unless one (the ubiquitous One) has pissed me off. Nah, not even then. I have a sharp tongue, but a soft heart. So, I've turned my Twitter phone messages off. That's what we call "taking care of oneself."

It is also called "taking care of oneself" to only read people and posts that interest me. This is a new tack: formerly I read just about everybody I had ever met or wanted to or thought I should. But it was taking me ages every day to work my way through this one and that one's whatever. In fact, some days it became the One Thing I Did: read every blog on my Google Reader. Good girl. Well done. Go fetch. What I'm finding with my new discernment (is there such a word? there is now) is that the blogs I am really attracted to are those where the writing (a) is really really good, and (b) the writer lets me in to their life. Right now these are the blogs I don't like to miss: Thursday Drive, Mad Marriage, A Walkabout's Weblog. Is it any coincidence that they're all writers? Hmmmmmmmmm? I think not.

*state of mind

Hungry Hill: A Memoir, by Carole O’Malley Gaunt

Hungry Hill: A Memoir, by Carole O’Malley Gaunt. University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.

Carole O’Malley Gaunt is quite obviously Irish, and center stage of her memoir is her alcoholic father. How much more does one need to know to slot it into the genre of memoirs that detail the ills the Irish child suffers at the hands of his or her drunken parent? Think the McCourts, for one. It seems that her publisher and her publicist are aiming at that audience. Here’s the back flap copy they’ve written to entice readers:

“The author recounts her sad and turbulent story with remarkable clarity, humor, and insight, punctuating the narrative with occasional fictional scenes that allow the adult Carole to comment on her teenage experiences and to probe the impact of her mother’s death and her father’s alcoholism.”

Just makes you want to run right out and buy the book, doesn’t it. If you said, no, then you would be missing something, because the deathly prose in Hungry Hill is confined to the jacket copy. O’Malley Gaunt herself is a talented writer whose way with words and faculty for specific details makes this story of her teenage years come alive as only the best of memoirists have the wherewithal to achieve.

I am not Irish and my parents were merely social drinkers, but I grew up in roughly the same era as O’Malley Gaunt details here, and I can tell you: she’s got it down, right to the penny loafers and the headbands. Time and again, she transported me back to that time and that place. Here’s Carole on a double date:

“…Richie leans over, looks at Gordie, and lifts his eyebrows, a signal if I ever saw one. When Gordie puts thirty cents down for their cokes, Kathy pulls out her wallet from her straw bag while I reach into the pocket of my Bermuda shorts for the exact change. Because Gordie and Richie do not fork money up for our sodas, my neck relaxes a little….Out on the street, a blast of hot air hits us as if the July heat had been waiting for a Friday night meltdown. As we walk up the street, Richie and Gordie talk about cars—engines, headlights, and prices, but I can’t tell one car from another and have only just learned what a tailfin is….In the middle of Newbury Street, while talking about the pits in chrome fenders, Gordie reaches for my hand. It’s not as if he’s going to lift my hand with its short fingernails to his lips and kiss it, after all this is Springfield, not Paree. But still I don’t like it.”

I was on that double date, only mine was in Pittsburgh and we had just come from Gammon’ s and what made me uncomfortable was the boys hooting and hollering at a sign in the butcher’s window: Breasts, 79 cents. But the straw bag, the Bermuda shorts, the endless talk about cars and such that we all listened to with such feigned admiration—she’s nailed it.

But if you’re not looking for a trip down memory lane, there are those other reasons to read this book. It has something to do with the fact that her mother died early and her father was a handsome alcoholic and she was the only girl with six brothers. But at heart, Hungry Hill is really a coming of age story. The specifics of her life are less important than watching her make her way through the landmines that are always waiting for young girls growing up. This is not to minimize the impact that her father’s drinking had on her, but really, it is more important to her now, probably. There is about those fictional scenes with the adult Carole and the parental figure who wronged her a Twelve Step patina that rings false with the intense truthfulness of O’Malley Gaunt’s written memories of the time.

Hungry Hill is, despite the jacket copy, not a “sad and turbulent story.” Far from it. It is a counter to the bloated tales we're getting of the good old days of the Sixties and Seventies, stories of the movers and shakers, as it were, by the movers and shakers of today. This, on the other hand, is just a book about a girl in a time and a place; it’s a window into Growing Up Girl then—and I suspect—now as well. And it captures the era far better than all the retrospectives in the glossy weeklies have done.

Flotsam and Jetsam...post Christmas

I don't know if several days break is what I've been giving myself. I don't think it is the beginning of the end. More, I want to really get at why I'm doing ByJane, the "good" reasons and the "ill". I've erased that last phrase several times, because I don't like the opposition of good and ill. But it keeps coming back into my head, and I think it's because in some ways the "ill" reasons are those that I consider parts of my psyche that I would rather not exist. In other words, shit that I do.

One majorly (as they say) reason I've done (tense intentional) ByJane is because I want to play with the big guys, the A-listers. Not because I particularly like them (some I do; some--eh) or because I have anything really in common with them, thirty- and forty-something mommybloggers that they are. I want to play with the big guys because, pure and simple, that will signal to all and sundry, not the least of which is moi, that I have great worth. This is so obviously "ill" that I need say no more.

Another reason, which is nestled right in tight with the one above, is that I want to make money writing. Now I could, as I have done before, work to do it the traditional way: query, article, rewrite, revise rewrite, revise revised rewrite, wait for pay. Can you tell what fond memories I have of freelancing? So one would think I would do most anything to avoid it. Yes, one would. Unless one knew my uber-contrary ways.

Here are the things that I have been told/asked to do on my blog so as to make it PAY: (1) Focus on just one topic. I am constitutionally incapable of doing this. I have ADD for chrissake, people; my focus is in the best of times scattered. And besides, I don't wanna. And besides that, shouldn't the sharpness of my prose make up for the lack of focus? I mean, some days I reread what I've written and I think, hot damn, that's good. I wait for the world to beat a path to my door and...and...and...I'm still waiting. Then I think, hey , maybe it's not so good, maybe I'm fooling myself, maybe I've lost It. And then I'm all depressed and sad and who wants to write cheery things in that state of mind.

(2) Write about the breakup of my marriage. Do you have any idea how my stats went up when I first broke the news? Not to mention that I got a contract to write about divorce for a site that either never got going or is swinging without me. Because, frankly, I'm not so good at putting that ironic twist on someone else's, my soontobex's, psyche. I figure he's entitled to do his thing without my commenting on it and drawing the world's attention to it and creating subtle jokes and cynical snipes about it. And since all of that is one half of the story, I sorta can't write about the breakup of my marriage. Even if it would pay handsomely to do so. And maybe, even, make me an A-lister (because even I realize that Divorce is a focus, a single subject, that elusive grail). Not writing about it also means that some days what is on my mind is a great big ole elephant in the blog. A subtle beige one, with floppy ears. About which I will say no more because who wants to write cheery things in that state of mind.

Okay, the symmetry of these two final sentences is very nice and all, but really leads to the impression that I'm walking around wounded, dragging my limp and shattered ego/heart behind me. Well, t'ain't so, McGee. Generally speaking, I'm pretty up these days. I'm working on stuff and there's movement and life is good. Maybe because I'm working on Stuff. The advantage to having this shrink education (not to mention the wisdom of, ahem, the elders) is that I really can see my Stuff. I can lay it out and go, Ohho so that's what that's about...Hmmmm, very interesting. And then I think, oh, great for the blog. And then I think, why do I have to turn my every insight into a blog post? Am I living my life to live it--or to blog it?

And that brings me right back to the Original Ill--blogging as a manifestation of an untoward ego need.

Wooow! who said that?

Flotsam and Jetsam...

...which is, as you well know, the crap and crud that floats about in the pristine waters of This Land Is Your Land. It comes from us, we the people, those of us who haven't seen or don't pay attention to this injunction, pressed by your local Good Works people into the concrete above every sewer:

I, however, prefer to use it as a catch all title for the crap and crud that floats about in my mind, as well as all the rest of the stuff that's in there. Such as:

• So you thought, some of you, that I was writing a legitimate post about Hollywood. Ha! Can you not tell great art when you read it? That is the beginning of the thing I have been working on for quite a while now, and I decided to share it with all five of you. Feel free to comment and critique; I can take it (shure).
• I love Julianne Hough. She is so incredibly cute. And happy. Do you think she ever has a bad day? She makes me want to start wearing false eyelashes again. And face the world with a Halleluyah glow. And diet. And spend more time doing Pilates. And become a Mormon, because that seems to be something to do with dancing talent, not to mention having huge families.
  
• When I find a new blog to read, I put it in my Tryouts folder on my Google Reader. Then if I like it after a while, it goes to My Daily Read folder, which is just at your lower right. I am a picky picky reader. Remember, I've been ruint by years of reading Bad Freshman Comp papers. So not many people get a pass out of the Tryouts. If they're just okay and I read them when I'm hungry for internet communication, then they go into the And I Sometimes Read folder. Yesterday, for the first time ever, a blog made it from Tryouts to Daily Read in less than 24 hours. It's The Daily Coyote, (thanks to Dooce) and I'm in love with him. Go have a look and you will be too.
• Here's a question for you: what's with all the contests going on in the Blogosphere? Is this not a form of bribery? Read my blog, comment and you'll get entered in the sweepstakes of the century. And some of these contests have HUGE prizes. Like Ree of Confessions of a Pioneer Woman who gave out a $500 Amex card for someone naming a cow she took a picture of. Five hundred dollars! That is not chicken feed--or cow shit, for that matter. Is she just really rich; does ranching pay that much? Or does she get a little payback from the cigarette guys every time she mentions Marlboros? What's the story here? Enquiring minds want to know....
  

DeMille Dwellings, The Preface

If you made a list of all the different kinds of places to rent in Hollywood you might end up with some sort of architectural history of apartment dwelling in the 20th century. There are your former mansions from the teens and 20s cut down to a rat's nest of one- and two- room flats. The linoleum in them tends to peel up at the corners, and there's a fusty smell about them that one could call Eau de Old Man. In the 30s they built tall apartment buildings, modeled after those on New York's East Side. They’re called The Franklin Arms or The Excelsior, and each of the ten or so stories has two or three grand apartments with dumbwaiters and laundry chutes and that teeny cubby off the kitchen that was the butler's pantry but now more often holds a stacked washer/dryer combo and the dog food. Then there are the motel models, two story horseshoes ringing a central swimming pool. These are circa the 50s and 60s and they smack of Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb starlets lounging poolside in hip hugger 2 piece bathing suits and artfully coiffed platinum hair. The 70s and 80s gave us huge piles, proper apartments with elevators and subterraneum parking for tenants, monuments to uniformity and cheap construction.

And then there’s the likes of DeMille Dwellings, where I live. It’s a clustered hodgepodge of duplexes and triplexes that share a central garden feature--and not much else. It was built in the late twenties and is, depending on who you talk to, either a relic of Hollywood's back-lot working class stiffs or of Hollywood's above-the-line love nests. Considering that some of the former still live here and considering the stories they tell, I suspect both versions are true. That is, DeMille Dwellings did once house the lighting guys and costume girls of the Talkies and they did once entertain Rudy and Charlie and the lovable Fatty himself.

You can't really see the Dwellings from the street. The entrance to it is a brick portico, covered with scraggily ivy and one die-hard San Juan rose bush. Push through that and you're in a courtyard of sorts, part gravel, part grass, part overgrown weeds. The concrete fountain is off to the side a bit. It must have once been stunning, but now it's as tattered and forsaken as an old Hollywood whore. A frieze of mosaics once ran along the inside wall. I think it had something to do with the zodiac because there are still parts of Scorpio and Cancer that can be picked out. Most of the tiles are missing, pried off by--who? Kids? Vandals? Is there a market for used mosaics tiles?

The fountain doesn't work any more, of course. Or maybe it does, but no one has bothered to try it. It has become a gigantic ashtray cum garbage can. People throw their trash in it as if they were pitching pennies at Trevi. In some ways, I itch to clean it up. I have a thing about old things and restoring them and letting them live again. But I don't expect to be here long enough to really care, to get invested enough to be willing to stick my hands, begloved though they be, into the layers of detritus in that fountain.

I live in Number 3 1/4. It’s a studio bungalow squeezed in behind Number 3-1/2. There is no Number 3.

Wired for another year....

I just bit the bullet and pushed the WIRED renewal card through the mail slot. I caved, I did, and signed up for another 12 months.

Why, you might ask. Because, I might say, as you my faithful readers well know, I'm a magazine junkie. This year, however, due to the absolute dearth of income coming into my house, I've decided I must, absolutely must cut down. So I let this one lapse
because really, now that I don't live in West Hollywood anymore, it's just not the same. Then it was my neighborhood rag and I would check it out just to see who and what was around the corner at Fred Segal's or Revolution....
and this one
because really, although I'm still a makeup and face care aficionado, there just isn't enough new stuff out there to catch my interest. I have read so many articles over so many years about face care, wrinkles, botox, plastic surgery that I could write them (hey, that's an idea: magazine editors...call me!). What I could really write is any of the features about the Sixties, because, guys, I was there! I actually walked the streets of London with Twiggies drawn down my cheeks, and trust me, reading about it just ain't the same.

These decisions to bail on the subscriptions are, I realize, a recognition of my having passed out of the demographic pool of their readers. I feel as if that passed out should be accompanied by a dirge because it really says something significant to me. What, I'm not quite sure, but I am certain it's significant. And sad. But also truthful. [Trust me to make a really big deal about magazine subscriptions....!]

And I had decided to let my sub to Wired go because, I dunno, there's just so much cool stuff in it, and it gets the geek in me all jazzed up, but then I fall flat to the earth knowing I can never catch up with the knowledge base enough to really be a player. Then last night I started reading the December issue, the one that arrived with a big THIS IS YOUR LAST ISSUE card attached. It's got such a pretty cover
but when I opened it and started paging through, I was struck by how this has become a guy's magazine. The Dillard's ads are all for men's clothing and the Garmin ad features a hot babe. Okay, that's fine. I've subscribed to other men's magazines, not for the ads, but for the articles. Here, though, is what I got at Wired this month: The "What's Inside" feature deconstructs athlete's foot cream and the How To section shows me four cool ways to lace my shoes. What's next, Fifty Ways to Blow A Fart? There's an article on aging, in which 20 is over the hill because only teenage thumbs are adept enough to win text-messaging competitions. Um, guys, who's your audience here or, as my college roommate might say, "who's editing this shit?"

So, why, you're still wanting to know, did I sign on again for another year. For "Jargon Watch" and "Alpha Geek". For "Wired/Tired/Expired". For the "Wish List"--and, oh yeah, the articles that I might get around to reading now that my time isn't taken up with the likes of InStyle and Allure.

Maybe not good enough reasons. But maybe I'm just not ready yet to hang up my geek-credentials, such as they are.