Agnes: The Inchoate Dissatisfaction Entry

Sunday night

New things are happening for Agnes. This is not an easy thing.

I'm at the Anchor in New Haven, and I feel lucky to have ended up here. I am certainly not brave enough to have gone to Chazmo's in Hamden...

I can't say how little I want to be back here. I shouldn't be back here, and if it weren't for my apartment I wouldn't be back here. (Queen is playing a little to loud on the juke box. I am going to try and power through it, but this entry isn't going to be one of my best.) I have graduated, I should be gone.

When I finished my undergraduate education, I stayed put for another six months. This was not a good idea. I swore I would never do anything like that again. But then I did, though it isn't entirely my fault: my roommate refused to let me know when he was leaving which made it impossible to plan ahead and try and get rid of the place sooner.

Monday morning

I suppose bloggers are supposed to make separate entries when time passes, that being the point of a blog. I suppose those bloggers have consistent internet access, which I do not. This is a strange blog, anyhow. I'm wondering about the boundaries. If anybody really wanted to, they could figure out who Madeleine and I are, so it feels a little bit strange to be so circumscribed about the blog's scope. Especially because I can't imagine it is really possible to sustain interest in my quitting smoking and Madeleine's extended remix. In any event, I have had a difficult time over the past few days with the smoking thing. We all went to a barbecue at Kruger's friends place in Park Slope on Saturday and we had a very good time. Not too much drinking, which makes abstention easier. We caught a corner of the Brooklyn gay pride parade which was fun, despite Madeleine's death hatred of parades of all kinds, and then after all that we went out for a drink at a nearby bar. It was cool outside and we were sitting at picnic tables and Kruger and his friend Boca were swapping smokes across the table and I knew that I needed to leave. I was also hungry again by that point. So we left.

But yesterday was much worse. Getting off of the train all I could think about was how much I just wanted to by a couple of backs of cigarettes and some gin and call up some of the “bad kids” from school and get rid of the time I have to be here. I didn't. Which I am glad about. I have a little card in my wallet that has a long list of reasons why not to smoke. I am supposed to look at it whenever I have cravings. I don't do this, but there you are. I ended up going for a long run/walk after showing the apartment. Then I came back and tried to read for a little bit but was feeling restless. I wandered around the city a bit looking for a coffee shop that would be open past 9 with wireless. There is only one, and it was mobbed. I ended up sitting on the steps of the architecture building so I could at least log on to the school's wireless network, but I packed it up after only 10 minutes or so—afraid I would get mugged. I thought about seeing a movie, but I had an hour to kill, so I rode around on my bike and thought about how the only reason I want to see a movie is that this particular movie theater has the best popcorn ever but the last time I went and saw a movie there just so I could eat the popcorn I got sick and I probably shouldn't do that again. So I went and got a cheeseburger instead. For breakfast I'd had a bagel with cream cheese. For lunch I'd had hot wings and fries. Completely disgusting. At least I got a ton of exercise though... (Dear Reader, you are rubbing your hands together with glee aren't you?) The bloom is off the rose of healthiness. Now I'm just feeling ornery. I think a good deal of it is feeling ready to start making work again and not having my materials/space set up to allow for that. I just finished reading John McPhee's The Ransom of Russian Art which described how Norton Dodge collected the work of “unofficial artists” in the USSR. Strange to think about how these people, with limited to no access to materials, hounded by the KGB, with no space to work and broke managed to make art and M and A are all over pulling teeth style. Any volunteers to rough us up in our apartment late at night?

Madeleine Plagued by Doubts

I will never finish Story #2.
Story #2 is so difficult--how did I ever think I could write it?
Or write anything at all?
And, anyway, no one will want to read it.
It's too long.
It sounds like the other story I wrote.
Why can't I just write a simple story?
Contests want stories that are 250, 3000, 5000 words long, yet I can't write a story that's 250, 3000, 5000 words long.
I must be a bad writer.
I would love to write a simple story!
I could win a contest if I wrote a simple story.
I should not want to win contests.
I should not even enter contests.
The NYTimes Book Review said today that writers write their best fiction before they are 40, so all my best fiction is behind me already.
He has an agent!?! How did he get an agent?
I'm happy for him.
I am wasting my time.
I should write the novel I want to write, not the stories.
No one reads stories.
No one reads novels.
I always write the wrong things.
Why aren't I one of those people who write the right things?
Why aren't I one of those people who get encouraging notes from editors at literary journals?
A rejection letter would be so much more encouraging if it included an encouraging note.
As soon as I finish my book, publishing will die.
I can't even write an interesting blog post.
I wish my doubts were more interesting.
Joyce Carol Oates has interesting doubts, I bet, if she has any.
She doesn't have any.
I can't manage my time.
I should write a play.
I should write a screenplay.
I don't send out my work enough.
I don't send out my work to the right places.
Story #3 will be even harder to write than Story #2, and Story #4 will be even harder to write than Story #3, and so on and so on and so on...

What's Up With Agnes Is... The Miseducation of Rita

No posts for a couple of days. I've been lying low not wanting to make Madeleine too crazy with manic posting. Plus had to spend two entire days dusting books and making slipcovers for our bookshelves. I also threw out a bunch of stuff to try and make a little way for the impending influx of giant amounts of stuff from New Haven, but mostly it was bookshelf slipcovering.
Our gentleman friend Kruger was visiting us from Texas. Kruger is amazing--a writer who is now doing speechwriting for muckity mucks--and Kruger smokes. It wasn't too bad for me, though last night he smoked about three cigarettes in the apartment as we were having a drink and unwinding/getting ready for bed. All night I had smoking dreams. I also dreamed that I had a bunch of pets and they all died. The death toll was significant: two hamsters, a cat, a kitten, and a puppy. I am not sure what this means. Dear Reader, any suggestions? I know that you've been analyzed....

And for those who aren't Our Dear Reader, she and I have engaged in a weight loss battle. We shall see who loses those 15 pounds first. I think it is going to be me, actually, as I am fierce and determined. But ODR has much better tits than I do. Sigh.

DAY 11

What's up with Madeleine?, or Actually, What's up with Agnes?

I woke up early this morning and among(st?) the things on my agenda for today--I just remembered that I was going to get my driver's license renewed today! Is it already too late to do that? Will I be in line at the DMV (I almost wrote DMZ) for the entire day if I go now?--was to write on the Mildred, and to read Agnes's entry on the Mildred. And to my surprise Agnes has TWO new entries on the Mildred! Yay, Agnes! That was my first thought, followed quickly by: Boo, Madeleine! Then my third thought was that this is not a competition, Madeleine, and my fourth thought was why do I always turn EVERYTHING into a competition? Why, if someone is doing well, do I turn that into a referendum on me, i.e., Agnes's writing on the Mildred only highlights the fact that I have NOT been writing on the Mildred, not meeting my deadlines, not holding up my end of the bargain, not working hard enough, not doing everything I need to do to change my situation and make all of my dreams come true? Fifth thought: Actually, I am much better about that--that being "turning everything into a competition," "making everything a referendum on me"--than I used to be. (Thought number five is dedicated to Our Dear Reader.) Sixth thought: this just proves what I thought about the Mildred all along, i.e., that it only works or it works best if both Agnes and I are writing on it, that we spur each other on to write on the blog; this is exciting and gives new energy to the Mildred! Then finally the seventh thought: I am so glad Agnes is still not smoking.

I would like to train myself to skip from Thought 1 directly to Thought 6.

Anyway, I am going to renew my license today. If I don't do it today, I will never do it, and I need a valid license before I go on vacation.

I still have plenty of time in the day. I always feel like I don't have enough time in the day, even when I have the entire day free. On free days, I feel like I have to go grocery shopping, for example, and then I have to make dinner at some point and that takes up a lot of time. The good thing about Agnes being back, or one of the many good things, is that she has been making me dinner every night and doing the shopping (see Stepford Wife reference from one of her last entries). But she's away today, and I am off, and I agreed to make dinner. Maybe I will take you out instead, Agnes, if you are reading this.

I can feel the whole day slipping away and it's only 9:30 a.m. This is a problem. But this is how I think a lot of the time. Agnes knows this all to well.

I did write Saturday and Sunday. And I will write today.

I was going to post about something else today--about my new process and how it is working so well, both for Story #2 and for Story #3--but I will save it for tomorrow. The driver's license thing threw me off! Madeleine, get thee to the DMV!

On Fire; Not Burning: In which we hear from Agnes once again

So this is the point in the trajectory when I get very crusty. I start obsessively making agenda-point to-do lists on my iCal and running around. Frankly I like it when I am in this mood, and I do get a LOT of shit took care of. Madeleine, however, does not appreciate it. Why she wouldn't like to get bulldozed by an affectless Stepford Wife is beyond me, but there you go.

It does make things easier to have someone else around--at least when things are going well, which they usually are. But there are drawbacks. As I may have mentioned before, I like to blame other people for things; even if I don't do this consciously, my negative behavior patterns are often reactive. Madeleine leaving town after a visit was often a cue for me to go on a bender, for example. The thing about this transferred blame is that it actually makes me feel less lonely. Doing something wrong or stupid or damaging to oneself (or others) can be redeemed in a perverse way if it was done because of somebody else. It's not my fault means that it is someone else's--and that means that we have a connection with that other person. Maybe not the best connection, but still it is something.

Last night I went to a birthday party for a school friend. It was too soon to be seeing all of those people again. I wasn't drinking, which was probably why it seemed so absolutely impossible to be around other people.

I am not smoking today. No smoking since tuesday morning.

La Agnes Nuova

I am writing this on June 2nd—the second day of the rest of my life—and I am writing it in Brooklyn. I don't know if other people are like this or not, but I fetishize “new beginnings” and this one is no exception. But let me back up a bit.

On Sunday and Monday with the heroic help of the indefatigable Madeleine, I moved completely out of my studio. As one of my classmates said, this was a much more significant thing to me than graduation. Since the year began last fall there was not a single day that I was in New Haven that I did not go to that building, and there were many days that I left it only to take a shower in the gym nearby. And yesterday, although my access card would still have worked and although I was in New Haven, I didn't go back at all. I wonder when the next time I will enter that building will be? I don't feel any animosity toward it, but I don't want to go back there for a long time. I am ready to move on (Self magazine are you listening??? (Is Self magazine even around anymore?)).

I am also unexpectedly excited. Hooray for excitation. Now I am back in the city at a coffeeshop. I am sitting outside and everybody all around me is smoking. They are smoking and talking about quitting. That is the funny thing about cigarettes: they are a reification self-loathing. And the self-loathing is almost universal amongst smokers—even the defiant ones use these shadows to heighten the narrative of their addiction/pose. I am not smoking today. I quit.