Wednesday, May 04, 2005Facehuggers: Part IISo I squeezed in a quick beer today with my pal, Cindy, in between work and a potluck at my youngest son's school. I previously mentioned Cindy Jackson, artist and sculptor extraordinaire, in the Facehugger blog a few months ago. She is on jury duty downtown and has started ending her day as a dutiful member of society by stopping off at Mijares, also now known as Our Lady of Tasty Margaritas. The first day she was there she was accosted by some bible thumpers, so today I said I'd come and take communion with her and attone for some sins by breaking of the chips and drinking of the Corona.We were complaining about life in general and how everything gets in the way of our True Calling, in particular. Complaining about how there's never enough time is what we do. And it turns out we were both freaking out in exactly the same way last night. At 2:30 she was up doing the mental and emotional equivalent of hyperventilating. She's working on a huge public scupture, involving the figures of two men. One of the men is done, the other one is unfinished. In her mind, it's a disaster. Me, I'm working on the final edits and deep polish of the book. I'm so burned out that I'm loathing every word. Last night, while Cindy was hyperventilating, I was yanking out one essay after another, hating every last one. In my mind it was easier to pull the whole thing rather than work on fixing a couple words that one of my editors questioned. I rapidly degenerated into a kind of collegiate too-much-speed kind of mentality: This piece sucks, the whole book sucks, I was stupid to start this in the first place, therefore I suck most of all. Mature stuff. After we compared freak outs, we started the confessional. Her fear is that there's going to be an earthquake and the finished piece will be smashed, leaving only the unfinished one and her dead body. People will come in, look at them both and declare her a hack because all they'll have to judge her on is the unfinished piece. My fear is that I'll forget to send myself the latest draft and my computer will crash and I'll never find those words again. The words will be lost, the book won't be written. I'll end up in a ratty hotel room with a broken bulb swinging overhead and really disgusting carpet underfoot. Her fear is that she'll stop seeing the piece in her head. My fear is that I'll have a stroke and the words will all be on the left side of the brain and the mechanics will all be on the right. I'll be looking at the words on the other side of the chasm and never be able to access them again. She fears looking at the piece and not feeling it talking to her anymore. I fear smashing my hands in industrial freight elevators. (Now that she's heard that, she's added losing the use of her hands to her list.) She fears sitting in jury duty and having a fire come and wipe out the courthouse, killing her and leaving the sculpture undone. I fear dying on the freeway and not being able to find notoriety even posthumously. Whoever is in charge will look through my computer and not find the good stuff. The folders will be named wrong, cryptically. I'll have fucked up in some fundamental way. They'll give up easily. "Whatever, man," they'll say to each other. "She's gone. So what?" They'll format the hard drive and poof! all my words will disappear. We are both at a place in our careers where we've never been before. She is under contract, doing a big public piece. I'm paying people and becoming visible and making commitments to produce a book. She fears that she will freak out to an extent that she can't finish and she'll be swamped by lawsuits and legal actions. I fear that I will freak out to an extent that I can't finish and I'll be flayed and dipped in acid by my adoring and supportive partners in this venture. She fears fear. I fear fear. We have no choice. We are all but totally paralyzed by out endeavors... yet we must carry on. There is no alternative. We must quiet our breathing, we must steady our hands, and we must continue. It is do-able. It is what we both set out to do, many years ago. And it's OK. Maybe this is what everyone goes through. Maybe it is. Maybe you can't really go forward with a brave act without moments of pure logic-destroying freaking-out fear. We're both obviously in it too far to actually cave into the panic. And we're both too old to really consider giving up. My god, we'd never be able to live with that. So we meet and we commune. We break of the chips and we drink of the Corona. The angels sing the Ave Tequila and it is goood. To be with a fellow nutcase. To be with a fellow frontiersman. To be with a fellow human. Amen. And pass the salsa, please. (By the way? It's in the D:/My Documents/Grace Notes folder. FYI.) # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 10:35 PM  
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