Diary of a Sex-Starved Pseudo-Mennonite, Part 27

Ever since I realized I could, I've been writing to save my life. People think healthcare workers and inventors and preachers save lives. And they do. But 1 more way that artists are unsung is the overlooked reality that art saves lives. It saves the painter and the viewer. The singer and the listener. The writer and the reader. And you can go back to it over and over again. It doesn't just save you once.

I had a Goan professor from Uganda who wrote a scathing novel about Edi Amin and I think got to be an American because of it, on account of the death threats. He taught a class on Elvis. Which I missed. He worshipped Jackie Wilson. He said that if you write a book and after getting to the end, people want to kill themselves, it's not a good book. Someone should have told Carson McCullers that, but I agree with his point. Because art is supposed to enrich and elevate and save lives. Not end them.

My professor brought this up when teaching us about Bessie Head, an African writer. Apparently Bessie was all feels and no logic. The professor did not denegrate Bessie exactly, but something in his breathing and phrasing suggested this way of being was problematic. Bessie published a bunch of books and was the only woman taught in our African Literature class, so you'd think she had some capacity for rational thought in order to become widely published as a black woman from the third world. I mean, who got those books published? A white capitalist man who noticed her crying into her notebook in Botswana and said There there dear, let me handle this? The apparent issue of excessive feeling never came up with the rest of the (male) authors studied in class.

You might not be an occasional student of dark writers who are mostly white world obscure, but I loved to read Jamaica Kincaid in my 20s and she taught me to feel what it was to be Caribbean infinitely more than endless, bad luck Haitian newscasts, which were also powerful. I thought no book could make me feel more seen than Jane Eyre, then I read Wide Sargasso Sea, the prequel by a white yet Caribbean author and suddenly Bertha, the first Mrs. Rochester, was not just the evil cray-cray bitch crashing Sweet Jane's impending union with Mr. Meant-to-Be, but a complex wounded Amazon failed by loved ones and seeking to heal her disappointments of the heart by maiming some folks who turned their back on her in the attic that was her prison home. In the West Indies, Mr. Rochester, the love of my life, proved to be kind of a dick. Author Jean Rhys made me think less about Jane and way more about Bertha. This is also what art does. It makes you think about foregoing your most cherished saints and bedding down with the shadowed sinners.

I earned an English degree, then a terminal writing degree (terminal is right) in a booming Clinton economy I failed to feel. I was a person stalling. A person who did not want a real job. I studied my passions and it made me poor. As art usually does. I never imagined an interwebs dawn where writers might be needed, even sought after. And guess what? I still don't want a real job. Unless that job is writing this blog.

I am 47. I believe I have had 44 job titles.

It might be 42 or 43. But I cannot make myself count again. 

I fear I cannot do this much longer. Work. For a place. With rules and florescent lights. If I didn't work for a bunch of underdog-loving hippies, I would probably already be on the street. And then they'd have to take care of me anyway. Cuz that's what they do.

I might drop out and live in a basement in St. Louis. That plan happened today. I get my own room and Bonus Mom privileges to a saucy 11-year-old girl. I would have in- house playmates and a reason to go to field hockey games. A reason to go anywhere.

After I melted down on a text chain today, my girlfriend from California sent me CANDY. Four kinds. That I got to pick out. And are pending delivery. So I guess I will wait for my candy and work on my art and once more not die today.

Until Next Time, Sweeties!

Ness Sweet Ness