THIS. IS. VERY. IMPORTANT.

“I had them read John Updike’s Rabbit Run. They came into the next lesson just incredibly outraged how sexist the character was – and really angry that I should ask them to read it because: how could you possibly relate to a misogynist character like that? I said: ‘You really can’t begin to imagine a character that wants to run away from his responsibilities?’ They looked at me like I had confessed to sympathy for a murderer. When I at one point tried to argue that racism and sexism were not quite the same things I had people shouting ‘Gender is a social construct!’ and so on at me. I said ‘Go home and look between your legs and tell me if that is a social construct’ and then of course all hell broke loose.” Gaitskill smiles, slightly mystified. “Literature is not a realm for politeness as far as I am concerned.”

                                      — Mary Gaitskill

Curses are like wishes.

The days are long now and I wake early, too early.  For some reason, I now decide how I want my day to go in those early hours. Usually I just lie in bed and think about all the things I should do versus all the things I want to do. Some are chores that have to be done. But this morning, I decided to paint my gate and make a wishing  tree out of my jasmine. It was impulsive. I had been thinking about it for a few weeks but I had no plan to do it today. The house needed cleaning, clothes to be washed, laundry to be folded. I am in the middle of reading Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill, and I really love her writing and I wanted to finish at least three more stories in that collection, but out I went into the garden. I watered some plants and then I looked at my gate and thought. I am going to paint it now, paint it green, put stars on it. Hang wishes. I suppose this is because I am writing so much on the novel now. I am in that world. I talk to my characters, I think ab0ut them over a bowl of cereal. I wonder at how anyone will like Stella, my heroine.

"Curses are like wishes."

That's a line from the novel.

It's a very simple line. And yet....

                                                                 

I ended up cleaning the house, too. I even vacuumed. Tomorrow and the next day I am going to write on the novel. Two days I will do nothing but write and plot and work out things in my mind. Live in that imaginary town I have created. Be one of the citizens. Be Stella.

Be Yourself. Take Action. Create Art and Beauty.

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.” 

                            ― Martha Graham

Feminism

“There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” 
                      

                                 ― Audre Lorde

On Love.

"It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal."

                           

                                 —E.M. Forster, A Room with a View.

Writing on the novel today and this painting came to mind.

Witches going to their Sabbath, 1878 (oil on canvas) by Luis Riccardo Falero