Redacted

F*** Secondary Trauma, Read This Instead

Lots of Weather

The only thing this post has in common with the Current News Cycle is that it also includes heavily redacted corrrespondence, as well as the unfortunate reassurance that you don’t even have to look at or talk about something to still somehow have it infect your head and life. I feel like I’m the only one in the world not surprised or scandalized by anything I’m inadvertently hearing, no matter how terrible. I mean, no one has ever talked to any men? Or been to the movies or seen a tv show or read a book or magazine or been on the internet? Open secrets.

I don’t know if that’s sad for me or if it’s part of the reason I’m still alive. I doubt everyone at every minute, then am happily shocked/surprised when anyone comes through as NOT a hobby rapistt or professional serial killer. And I know that sometimes the only way to get people to stop staring at you is to be really, really ugly.

Enough. New subject.

Happy almost Wuthering Heights week - or should I say “Wuthering Heights”? Ugh. I’m more apprehensive with every trailer. I mean, I’ll be there. But I’m scared.

Thank the green glowing gods for Fallout, my dose of tv joy each week. I watch and ask myself smart, fun questions like, Is it worth all the risk for a possible higher quality of life, as opposed to a lower quality of life and guaranteed survival? So many people are making a valid case for not wanting to die in the act of doing the right thing, and we don’t normally see a lot of that onscreen, we see moral certainty of one flat variety or another. We need more of this, stories of undermining our own better selves, because doing the right thing all the time comes with murky results at best, in the land of the shades of grey.

New subject. Again. How about this?

Nature gives the illusion of stillness because we get so used to recognizing movement in a straight line.

That’s from my notes app but who the fuck knows what I was actually thinking about when I wrote it. Probably something about the Liberty Biberty guy being back.

New, more coherent subject:

Redacted Excerpts from an Email to Craig:

“….And I’m sorry to be so dark. It’s technically February but I’m mentally still in January. Some of this is a bit depressing, to be sure. But I gotta see the cloud before I can see the lining. And sometimes sound like a legend on an embroidered pillow :)

It’s snowing today. Again. It’s beautiful but the winter is never ending. Are you getting an unusual amount of snow? I read that as the polar ice melts there’s more water and water vapor moving around in our storm systems so we get more snow and rain and all that. I’m home by myself. It’s the first day I’ve had in FOREVER with a few hours to myself, with the weather we’ve all been snowed in together off and on, but damn it’s good to look around and not see any human faces. My own face needs a break from making expressions. It doesn’t just, do that. I think alone I’m probably like a flat wax mask with a slight scowl lol. I don’t really flip that switch unless there are other people that need the reassurance I’m a human behaving like a human. So not today. It’s just coffee, scowling, maybe a little dancing by myself. Maybe not, I’m listening to Jewel and all up in my feelings and just cried over a song from the 1990s (Foolish Games) because of the world and this damned seasonal affective disorder and bipolar and hormones and just, you know, all the fundamental diagnoses that are actually just the features of what make me who I am and capable of all the things i do, like freaking people out and alienating them, writing stories and emails, selling things, and being pretty good with little kids and older folks. I don’t know. It takes a lot of tears to be alive these days, but I’m hanging in there.

Because the miracle is that good is still even happening amongst the craziness, right? I remind myself of that a lot.

Adam is 18 on Friday. Having all kinds of feelings.

(REDACTED PARAGRAPH re: specifics)

But that doesn’t make me feel any less untethered. I think of course some of it is fear for him, and what his adulthood will look like, what opportunities he will or won’t have, guilt for what the worlds looks like that we’ve pushed him into. But he’s of the generation of school shootings and online predators. I’m not sure his expectations of the world are very high. I hope the world changes enough at least for him to have better expectations, or delusions even.

(REDACTED PARAGRAPH)

From where I’m sitting I can see 2 pairs of cardinals, a chickadee, a blue jay, and a squirrel. Getting fat and full at the birdfeeders before the snow gets too heavy.

(REDACTED: 3 really long paragraphs about very specific people, places and things, some mutual acquaintances, and the tragedy of a librarian being hired away by the Corrections system, continued below)

He was doing real good in regards to our community’s future, just making a place for young wanderers and misfits or those curious or ornery or just in need of an easy place to exist. It doesn’t pay well enough to tend the cubs, you gotta guard the cages. Ain’t that America??? A couple years ago I saw some young teachers get folded into corrections after the (REDACTED) closed. It seems like it’s getting to be impossible to find a job that’s not healthcare, corrections, or food service/sales. The servant class, right?

A testament to my own undying hope and delulu

Okay now for the linings part.

I’m done fucking around with Summerskin. I’ve got a real live professional editor right at the (REDACTED location, job title and name), without an E, and she likes all the same books I do, and I brought her into my secret dark brain workings and she’s got the whole draft now, we’ve done a deal and gone into cahoots or business or whatever and she’s going to edit it come March. I’ll probably ask around a little in the fall, chuck it around to just like to see, on some off chance someone I know would know another Mike Gonzalez or Kelly that would be great to work with at a small press, but the plan is really just to go ahead and get it out. I’m going to try and learn more about self-pub through the fall (post-Heathers) and have this in people’s hands, all eight to fifteen people that might want it, by Summer 2027. That’s sounds like so far away, but I know how time is. And I need this thing in-progress but at arm’s length so I can still work on this new thing. I’ll be so slimy and fragmented when I have to talk about Summerskin to people that I’ll def just dry right up creatively.

I’ve written more conversations than I’ll ever need. More moonrises than are possible. Too many kisses to pick from. More than enough situational murder. Bones in bags and bones in lost jumbled piles. I just HAVE to sit down and decide which pieces I’m going to expand. I’m at the elasticy part where so many versions are possible I’m kind of in love with all of them so it’s easy to let myself procrastinate and not buckle down, just write different possibilities for different versions of things. And I still haven’t got the fireworks/moon thing, which really does feel like it belongs to this story, I just can’t figure where.

But I’m finally settled into my new work schedule, it’s post-Xmas and I am going through the week without feeling like I’m going to die in order to accomplish everything I need to accomplish, which means there’s definitely room to add more time to the writing. Maybe I can flesh out this loose schedule that I’m doing now, with emails and blogs, which is notes during the week and then sitting down on Tuesdays to flesh it all out. Once I get into the thick of it, Tuesdays won’t be enough, but it’s a good place to start. Please think of a title for me. I was thinking Dream Sequence, but to be honest I just really like that name and stole it from one of Adam’s favorite artist’s albums and have had it in my head to use for something for awhile now. But I actually think it might fit this one!

Speaking of writing, do you want to do a blog thing with me for your vampire book? We could do a vampire or serial killer theme for it, talk about movies/books, what you like and don’t, talk about some of these BFI movies and even how it’s more of a serial killer book. I love doing interview stuff with you, so be thinking it over, we could make it fun, it’s up to you.

(REDACTED: further ideas)

Also I think someone stole your book. I still have to figure it out.

On Monday we’re getting a puppy. A dude Eric works with has dachshunds and I can’t even say why that seems like a good idea excepted it’s a puppy, our old dogs need young family, and whatever makes Eric happy is probably fine. More on that later, of course.

This got so long, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize until I started to fix some of the spelling and typos. I may lift parts of this for the blog, too, looking over it. I struggle with that, still, but it’s good practice with a theoretical audience, it’s just so vague, it can be a little Madame Psychosis radio broadcast sometimes. Vonnegut had it right when he talked about the audience of one.

I just have to take out all the interesting parts. I hope everyone we know dies first so when we go all this shit talk can come out, in the loving familial spirit with which it’s all intended lol, with the power of retrospect & hindsight, in huge collectible tomes that scholars refer back to for early 21st century context clues.

(REDACTED sappy BFF sign off )”

Sometimes it makes more sense on paper, right? Life, I mean.

Maybe I’m the human equivalent of liminal space, connective tissue; I’m never going to feel inside or belonging to one thing but maybe it’s because I’m supposed to be the sticky thing that brings those others together, or gives them a chance to react to each other. If I wasn’t a dumb bunny when it came to certain things I’d be using elegant chemistry metaphors, but it’s just me so we’ve hot static and long hallways.

Take care of yourselves, friends. Take a break from the news. Winter, and pain, are temporary. Til next time.

-Amanda G.