Dear Annie:
Well you've got balls and I expect your procedure will be fine. Boy it only takes a threat on your life to get you doing your creative stuff again. Sounds like a great collaboration you're having with your artist friend. I just saw a movie called Painters Painting from 1973. All the Abstract Expressionists talk about their work and just one woman is included, Helen Frankenthaler. I told the people afterwards (it was shown in my studio building) that when I was young and went to the Cedar Bar or to Monhegan, all the women artists were wives (i.e. servants) of these famous artists, bowing and serving and scraping. I would never even go out with one of them. The movie is interesting - from Netflicks if you do that.
I've been writing things on my computer and on Facebook and on the Internet for six weeks while it's been raining. The sun was out for five days but now it's dark again. I'm also making a huge succulent garden. The first step is separating and repotting all the succulents I already have; they've been surviving all crunched together. Everyday tiny offshoots of the old plants appear in their new little homes. I know absolutely nothing about any of this so it's interesting.
I spend a lot of time touring through antique malls where lots of different dealers have stalls. I'm not sure why just looking at all this stuff pleases me. I rarely purchase anything at all.
I'm fat and no longer buy clothes but I buy perfume instead. I hurt my foot so I no longer buy shoes and just wear one kind of lightweight fabric and rubber clogs. I do buy a lot of food. Today I went to a nearby Farmer's Market. They had tables and tables of fresh California vegetables and bags of fresh oranges and Indian food and orchids. I bought radishes, spinach and smoked salmon.
I'm also writing this book about dying. I never stop being shocked at how little people consider the fact, or the idea, that they are going to die. Death is born with you and with life; death stays with you the whole time until it takes over from life. Maybe when you're dead life is in second place, always waiting to take over again, just like death had done the last time you were alive. Whatever the story is, it's not what we think it is.
Do you want me to come with you when you go to the hospital? I will come and stay if it helps you. What are your plans?
You're probably planning on driving to Portland for the procedure and then driving home yourself a few days later, causing a severe electrical storm on the highway and possibly killing a dozen lobstermen in their trucks on the way to the pound.
My book says that people think when they die they will see, or be reunited with, their loved ones. The truth is when they get to heaven they barely remember who those loved ones were. And those old forgotten loved ones, whom they usually really hated, are the last creatures in the world that they want to see.
You can tell, I'm sure, that I'm well on my way to losing my mind and becoming an incredible writer. I just got my first rejection letter. They told me to take some writing workshops. That manuscript is destined for the Coen Brothers. (I bet a hundred people a day say that!) This is no country for old women!
I put an article on my blog about an African American artist from the early 20th century, Henry Ossawa Turner, and I get twenty hits a day on that entry. He was unknown in 1994 when I wrote it, but I guess he's being taught in classes now.
I'll send you some photos. Marco's baby, at five months, weighs the same as his brother Noah who is 26 months old. Most of my kids are moving to New York soon. I'm happy to come to Rockland if I can help you.