I am very tired and very overworked, so I did not really expect to have any interest in a hobby that does not provide me with anything but an emotional release (can do that with other web sites, but I digress)... No money and no real rewards besides knowing that my name does link up to this page and others on the web. So, no real advantages...
Fine by me. I have just been watching "Public Speaking", a Martin Scorsese film on the writer Fran Leibowitz. Her claim that she only worked hard enough to make enough money for rent and then loafed about strikes a raw note in my head. I work enough to have money in my bank account(s) to the point where I can ignore it. After a certain point, money is like the food you once thought you liked; instead, you are just going through the motions with it. That may explain my addiction to stationery. I have too many notebooks, reporter's pads and sketchbooks for one person to get through in any number of lives. Moleskine and the dollar stores I have patronized are my fixes. And that is also fine by me.
I need to loaf even more. Right now, I handle tests and papers for students who feel entitled to a good grade just for appearing, or disappearing. I have colleagues who have me at meetings that I cannot add anything to due to a serious lack of interest in being taken seriously. I come home to people who seem born to just take up space (i.e. roommates) and I have my music, a few films and too many books. How could I not write?
Now, that title. It comes from a simple link I discovered online about how the ex-Mrs Kutcher is still able to rock a bikini. And I will admit, she does pull it off. To a point. I can see the body, but I also know the particular brain that it is attached to. She is one of those actresses who cannot see beyond the lights. I mean, who else thought "Striptease" was funny, or that "G.I. Jane" was serious. Her whole career seems to be one long and endless flight of her self-fantasies. And now, Dame Mirren. My dear Helen has been in the business for far longer, weathered more stupid male fantasies than anyone deserves, been awarded for work on stage and screen that will be remembered for generations, and admitted a devotion to nudism. Stupid male fantasies aside, this is also something that she will be remembered for: the exposure of a body that was not hammered and sculpted into shape because of a committee meeting. This is a woman who enjoyed life and was not afraid to show just how to live it.
Two very different examples; two very different aims to consider. And that is what I have to consider if I am going to continue with any pretense of being a writer. I have to consider what makes me tick, what makes me want to do this...
