Pizza Party!

Tonight was rg_rothko's bday party, held at her house, and involving about 20 other people and lots of pizza. And orange soda. And icecream cake.

This evening's biggest surprise is discovering that one of RG's friends is someone I did some theatre with years ago. She remembered me as the "duct tape girl," because I'd used duct tape (gaff tape, actually) to tape my breasts for the show and won a humorous 'most creative use of duct tape' award for it later. It was the all female cast of A Comedy of Errors, which a lot of you came out to see. I was the Courtesan and I'd like to think my breasts played an important role. I think I have a picture of it somewhere, I'll post if I can find it.

I'm constantly having these reminders that the world is a lot smaller than one ever imagined it would be. Sometimes that's kind of comforting.

dr_tectonic did Barbie Tarot readings, I brought my deck and did a reading for the bday girl, and had my own read by RG's husband. It was interesting, to say the least, and spoke to the kind of paralysis and trauma I've seen in my career recently.

It's been interesting how difficult it's been to talk about the experience and how uninterested I've been in finding a new job. Obviously, it's an inevitability, and one I will be putting a lot more energy into in the next few months.

In the meantime, I should say that I've been basically, generically, happy, particularly now that the Siren impulse has passed. Life is so sweet in a thousand, ordinary, ways. Having the time to savor it has been an incredible gift to me.

And because I don't want you all thinking I'm still killing plants, I thought I'd mention that there are things blooming in my garden. Some of the xerics I've never seen bloom are producing flowers; the miniature yellow rosebush next to the mailbox is budding. The yard is still a struggle and a wreck. I still can't help but feel that things bloom despite me, rather than because me, but there are a few flowers here and there and I'm touched. It's a call to the faithful, and a reminder that the lifecycle continues with or without my conscious participation.

On publishing...

sachie asked for advice to pass on to a colleague about publishing & NYC. I thought about reposting here, but decided I'd just direct you to my comments in her post:

http://sachie.livejournal.com/186818.html

The ultimate question: If I knew then what I know now would I have gone into publishing?

Good question. I think I learned what I needed to from the experience. I got into publishing primarily becaues I wanted to better understand how the process worked, how people made decisions, how books are made. I learned all those things. I also learned a lot of things I wish I hadn't about how awful people can be. I'm not sure that's publishing's fault, but I have to tell you that it is not always a pleasant industry and I feel that it is more abusive than some in its treatment of the over-educated and idealistic young people that are its entry-level workers.

The larger community of 'book people' I have always found to be extremely warm and welcoming, but it's smaller subsets can be mean, petty, and vindictive, particularly as there are many little fiefdoms ruled by selfish personalities. (This extends beyond publshing, btw.) My experience with publishing kind of made me feel like we were a bunch of rats squabbling over scraps while missing the bigger picture.

I definitely think that the most interesting aspect of publishing is how it will deal with technology. I think there is a lot of room for creative, technologically savvy, young people to be able to outpace the current, groaning, dinosaurs. I guess, overall, my advice about a career in publishing would be "get what you need out of it, don't expect it to give back."

What my relationship to publishing will be in the future remains unknown. I'm not looking, specifically, for another job at publishing at this point; but I'm guessing how my experience in the industry will play out in the long term will be one of life's great and wonderful mysteries.

My teacher is always telling me, "Nothing is wasted," and increasingly I'm finding that to be the case. Things have a way of coming back around in completely unexpected ways; and for some reason I'm NOT equating this with the no bridge-burning rule. The two are not always the same, and not always engaged in a causal relationship. Life needs destruction of outmoded, useless, or even dangerous structures, just as much as it needs the building of new ones.