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Better Than This
25 · Oct · 2002
A friend of mine told me the other night that he has been alone for the last four months. No girlfriend, no love interest, nada. And he said this is the happiest he’s ever been. I knew where he was coming from. I have spent long periods of time alone too, although it didn’t come without a price. Being alone, truly alone, forces a person to get to know themselves. And for most people, finding out who they really are is not as rewarding in the beginning as we wish it to be.
It’s easy to joke with our friends. “I am an unemployed writer!” I laugh. But wait. Sitting alone in my kitchen and saying this to only me feels quite different. And that was an easy confession about my identity compared to the other ones. I remember just over year ago, looking at my hands as they lay on a pillow in my room and saying out loud “These are the hands of a thirty year old woman who no one is in love with.” Ouch.
Luckily, if you can get past all your ugliness, you will actually start to uncover some good truth about who you are as well. Whatever I had done wrong, made me no worse than the next guy in Gods’ opinion. And anybody else who wanted to point a finger at me was probably just somebody who didn’t know themselves very well. We are all on equal ground whether we choose to accept it or not.
These are two things this week that I wish I and my friends could remember more often:
You have to face who you really are in order to make yourself into who you want to be.
No man’s past can dictate his future.
better than this
i have long been lying
though it was not by choice
long i have engaged your lives
and hoped to hear a voice
but we’re building community on music and drink
and if no one gets lucky, we never have to think
(chorus)
cause luxury peril sets in
into our bones through our skin
and we’d rather sleep that admit
it could get better than this
you can’t know by my eyes
and I’d rather not explain
but two years ago I died
and then woke up again
and if I had the sympathy of a label or a bass
the simple love i learned you wouldn’t dare waste
but luxury peril sets in
into our bones through our skin
and we’d rather sleep that admit
it could get better than this
if you want to cry your wedding ring to sleep
if you only want a body and a piercing clear drink
if you want a lover who cannot love you back
you’ll lay with your pity for a long winter’s nap
if I said it louder
and pretended not to care
would you speak some truth?
or simply stop right there
it’s such a flood here when it’s s not bone dry
blessed be the man unafraid to ask why
luxury peril sets in
into our bones through our skin
and you’d rather sleep that admit
it could get better than this
Penny René
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions. ~albert camus
Posted by Penny Rene at 05:28 PM
Playing Writer
18 · Oct · 2002
The Genius Of The Crowd
there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day
and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace
those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love
beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect
like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock
their finest art
--Charles Bukowski
The first time I wrote for the sole purpose of writing I was kind. When I woke the next morning to find the love poem “until” sitting on my nightstand in my handwriting I wasn’t sure I had actually written it. It felt like something had jumped out of me onto the paper and I didn’t know if it was a one time fluke or the beginning of a serious condition. I mean what does a writer do? -especially a writer who doesn’t make up stories, but pulls them right from her own experience. On career day at school, no writers visit. So I made myself up as I stumbled along.
I looked for a mentor, someone to tell me where people like me go and how they survive with this aching desire to serve reality raw like fresh cut steak. I looked in the books I ordered from the Weekly Reader. I looked in National Geographic and in the old New Yorker magazines. And every trip to the book store or library I looked in the poetry section. I would pick up random books with good titles and silently pray that I would find something refreshing that made me forget what time it was. And one day in Tower Records and Books I picked up Charles Bukowski.
Reading Bukowski is not likely to soothe many people’s souls – especially a 25 year old Christian woman. One biographer said “It may be difficult to describe Charles Bukowski as a nice man, as anyone who is familiar with his works will readily appreciate. His style of writing was sometimes brutally unforgiving, the kind that Kerouac would produce if he drank a bottle of whiskey a day and left off taking all the funny little pills he was so fond of.” I could rely on Bukowskis’ honesty and this mattered to me at a time when I was just starting to see that life is not fair.
I don’t think I ever consciously decided on a style of writing for myself. I certainly didn’t wake up one day and make a plan of action for the subjects I would address or just how far I’d go when writing how I felt. If I had done that perhaps I would be further along in the literary sense and surely I would not be found to be so offensive in the way I present myself in writing. I would have been more careful with other people’s feelings and more aware of the consequences of misinterpretation. More restraint and less… me.
I said some things in one of my last memos that offended some people and for that I am truly regretful. I offer my apologies to anyone who felt exposed or misrepresented by my words. When I send out a memo I don’t have malice or slander on my mind. I’m simply telling my story from my perspective and unfortunately the tone and intent of my words are often lost on the people closest to me while other readers far away reply with praise and encouragement for my honesty. I’ve accepted that I can’t please everyone, but I don’t want to hurt those I love either. To be myself and not be misunderstood is a goal more difficult to obtain than I ever imagined it would be.
Driving to work today Charles Bukowski was on my mind. Though I am a million miles away from being the artist he was, there is a similar something in his attitude that brings me comfort. At one time he was a nobody writer who succeeded only in composing masses of poems and commentary that entertained strangers and alarmed his friends. In an unpublished letter to Carl Weissner, dated "sometime nov. 1969," Bukowski explained "I have one of two choices--stay in the post office and go crazy...or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve." Soon thereafter he finished his first novel, Post Office.
As it turns out, before he died in 1994 Bukowski published over sixty books--poetry, short stories, novels and he has been translated into all the European languages, including Greek and Serbo-Croat. And in West Germany, where his audience has from the outset been the most enthusiastic, much more so than in the United States, his books have sold over four million copies. This reminds me of the time my former father in law told me I had a “German quality” about me.
I have joked before that I don’t even say half of what I am thinking. This is not really true. Someday when this life is through with me, my journals will be found and it will likely be surmised that I curb more than half of what I want to say. This, of course is of no reassurance to those of you who are a part of my daily life and never gave permission to be written about in a thing called the “milk memo”. There are certainly drawbacks to dating a writer in a similar vein that there are obstacles in dating a musician or a therapist or a minister. I will try to be more compassionate in the future. And I hold nothing against anyone who decides that “milk memo” is not for them.
I don’t know what made me so intent of being open about things. Bukowski, who grew up poor, disfigured and abused, had his theory about his own lack of restraint. He said “When they beat you long enough and hard enough you have the tendency to say what you really mean; in other words, they take all the pretenses out of you. If you can get out of it, whatever is still there is usually something genuine.”
How much I have been beaten, what right I have to speak out is a matter of opinion. I can only tell you that I admire Charles Bukowski, Dorothy Parker, Auden and Jesus Christ all for the same reason – artful, useful honesty. While I have never written for anyone’s approval, I have never consciously written to damage anyone either. And rest assured I TRY to be more like Jesus than any of the others I mentioned.
Even as I sit here now and look over the two Bukowski pieces I have decided to send with this memo, I know the hardest part about reading something personal is the knowledge that it is only personal when it holds some truth for the person reading it. I send my apology today because some of the criticism I received was true and it hurt. I also received intense praise last week for the same work. Thus the brilliant balance of it all that I am learning to appreciate.
Thank you for letting me be a part of your lives in this way.
Penny René
Now
I sit here on the 2nd floor
hunched over in yellow
pajamas
still pretending to be
a writer.
some damned gall,
at 71,
my brain cells eaten
away by
life.
rows of books
behind me,
I scratch my thinning
hair
and search for the
word.
for decades now
I have infuriated the
ladies,
the critics,
the university
suck-toads.
they all will soon have
their time to
celebrate.
"terribly overrated..."
"gross..."
"an aberration..."
my hands sink into the
keyboard
of my
Macintosh,
it's the same old
con
that scraped me
off the streets and
park benches,
the same simple
line
I learned in those
cheap rooms,
I can't let
go,
sitting here
on this 2nd floor
hunched over in yellow
pajamas
still pretending to be
a writer.
the gods smile down,
the gods smile down,
the gods smile down.
Black Sparrow "New Year's Greeting" 1992
Charles Bukowski
Posted by Penny Rene at 08:25 PM | TrackBack
Job and Me
16 · Oct · 2002
Several years ago I found myself sitting on the side of the Rhine in Schauffhausen Switzerland. I had landed there as a stop-over point on my way to Romania. It was my first day out of the US, after having spent every dime I had to get there. My friends had gone further up the river and were planning to float down to embankment where I waited. While they were gone, I decided to begin a letter to my parents, describing my journey thus far. I lay on a blanket taking in the beauty of the place and became so overwhelmed with guilt that I began to cry.
I did not deserve to be in such a place – this I was sure. As I wrote, I thanked God for such a gift and marveled at the magnitude of that blessing.
About two months later I lay ill in my bed in Bucharest barely able to move, wondering if that was the night I would die. I was dehydrated, depressed and hungry and lonelier than I’d ever been. This, I decided, was a more suitable environment for such a materialistic person like me. I vowed that if I lived through my Romania adventure, I’d give my life over to serving others. I’d care less about fashion and more about compassion. I’d find a way to be a full time listener and problem solver for those who were the unlovely and suffering.
Last fall, I found myself at the Doubletree Hotel in Times Square, NYC. I had just come back from an incredible night on the town consisting of dinner, a musical, drinks and a cigar at the famous JR’s Cigar Bar in Manhattan. My hotel room was beautiful and when I opened my bedroom curtain, the lights of the city shone in like summer sun. I lay on my bed fully clothed and let tears roll down the sides of my cheeks. None of my fortune was my doing and I knew it. I wondered if my sister, mom or brother would ever be so lucky. I wished my friend Larry was there. I wondered how any of that would ever get me closer to a life of service to God.
Today a woman I worked with suggested I apply for food stamps, seriously explaining that I would probably qualify. I had just returned to work after finding out my car has a severe oil gush and is not safe to drive until I can gather the money for its repair. Never in my life have I been so stunned and the stark turns that can lead a person from one moment of bliss to the next moment of despair. The reason I am in such a financial predicament in the first place is that I could not accept another day of feeling forced into a life which I viewed as wasteful and superficial. The day I decided to leave my old life behind I knew what hard times might lay ahead, but it never occurred to me that the worst part would be dealing with my pride when well meaning friends offer me their financial help. At the same moment that I am amazed by their selflessness, I am overcome with feelings of inadequacy and anger. I do not want a handout! I am thinking. I want to work and be paid enough to live without this embarrassment. I want a moment of relief!
One of those days in Romania, I don’t remember exactly when, I stood in my room and listed to God all the things I would be willing to give up if He would take me in His hands and mold me into a woman who, not only did some good but the kind of woman would shake nations and change the world. On that list was every person I’d ever loved, (I named them one by one) every thing I’d ever owned (including my car, my clothes and my countless pages of writing) and all the daydreams I’d ever had about other things I could do(writer, minister, politician, artist manager). I’ve repeated this prayer more than a few times since then, always half hoping, half afraid that God would take me up on my offer. It would seem that maybe now He has.
I am less upset about losing my security than I thought I’d be. What makes me speechless on days like today is the idea that God is doing exactly what I began pleading with Him about six years ago and it has taken Him this long to believe I meant it. Not to mention the fact that He is probably just beginning and I have a lot more to lose than I thought I did. Still, in a surreal sort of way I feel optimistic that I may now actually get to see God in action. Who else can get me through this terrifying ride into the unknown where I’m without even my pride to protect me?
Posted by Penny Rene at 10:19 AM
16 · Oct · 2002
In 2001, fresh off my divorce from The Only Man Who Ever Loved Me, my beloved, unemployed, though sweetly romantic, friend from Scotland came to live with me. We decided to spend some time together to determine if we really were soul mates and should make our union permanent. After two hair-raising months, he had nearly convinced me. Two days later he looked at me and said he missed his friends and had decided to go home.
My first instinct was to tear him apart, limb-by-limb, for having made a fool of me in front of my friends. (who all had expressed that this union could never work for various reasons I was acutely aware of in the beginning) Instead, I made him promise to get his life in order when he got back to the UK and then drove him to the airport while contemplating my upcoming 30th birthday. When I walked away from his departure gate, I did not look back.
That summer I had an affair with a music theory professor. I prefer to call him by that title rather than “my next door neighbor,” which is exactly what he was. He was an athletic, sensitive type who dove into our relationship sure it would be his last. He swore I was the One and I let myself imagine us attending University Christmas parties while securing our long summer vacations in Eastern Europe.
Then 9/11 happened, I went to Romania, and Mr. Sensitive cheated on me and broke up with me on the way home from that very same aforementioned airport.
My anger was intense. I had been fooled and I couldn’t believe it. I called him a liar to his face, holding little back and vowed never to let my guard down again.
A month or so later, I began seeing a carefree friend of mine who was a DJ at an FM Rock station in Birmingham Alabama. We talked about our concern for humanity and our quirky, granola- rock star children we’d have fun raising while we traveled the world. Needless to say, he was wonderful and the logistics of our relationship were completely unrealistic. I broke up with him to prevent us both from having a nervous breakdown or turning to alcoholism, or worse, having to spend one more night in the same house with his mother, which is where he still lives.
Then, upon returning to Nashville last spring, I did something I swore I’d never do. I began dating a former boyfriend. Eight years ago we dated briefly and broke up, only to have him tell me that he was sure I am the woman he is supposed to marry and that one day I‚d realize it. I had secretly doubted my decision off and on all these years, but I am not usually one to go back on my rejections. The reunion came as quite a surprise to both of us. I saw him as I never had before -clearly. And I loved him with a new kind of love for me: Love and hate mixed together to form an attraction and a compassion I’ve felt for no other. We would name our children Wyatt and Phoenix, live just outside Music City in a sturdy house with generous land. He would be the famous drummer, motorcycle racer and I would be the best-selling writer wife who spent as much time in Eastern Europe as he spent touring. This dream seemed not only fair; it actually made sense to me -and that was new too.
But as time had opened my heart, it was closing his. The love that took eight years for me to uncover and grow in me; it took exactly three minutes for him to throw away. I watched the digital clock on his jeep as he broke up with me, again disbelieving that I could’ve been so stupid.
As I walked the path up to my apartment after he finished talking, something inside me quit working, like I had lost a lung or a heart valve closed up.
I have twice been divorced and anyone who tells you that divorce doesn’t mean a thing in dating is lying. To a person who has been through such torture, it makes all the difference in the world in how we choose people to date, why we stop dating most people, and why we stay with others even when the relationship does not match our childhood fantasy. A divorced person, if they are lucky and get some therapy, has come out of one side of hell and been given a reward for their survival. That reward is called reality. What this bit of insight does for me is make me very sure of my decisions, not so willing to give up when faced with blatant opposition to my goals.
But they say even Jesus had his moment of breaking. “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” No one ever gives good reason why the Son of God would show such despair - and publicly. But I can think of a few.
Maybe that’s exactly how he felt. Maybe something inside Him just snapped. It might be the only proof that He was human.
My friend Susan says that we should listen to what the universe is trying to tell us. If the universe does not allow us to run a successful business, for example, we should not run that business. If that is true, then the universe is telling me a few very unflattering things. Number one, I should stop writing milk memos. I’ve spent four months of serious energy trying to get a computer to set up an office for writing and have been entirely unsuccessful. Number two, I should file for bankruptcy. The main reason for this being that I am bankrupt, not even able to pay for food and rent on my meager hourly salary. And number three, I should give up on finding someone to share my life with that I truly love and settle instead for someone who loves me.
I have finally reached a point in my life when I look to God and demand that He cough up some answers. I am more than tired of pep talks by people who are merely reciting back to me answers they have heard all their lives but have no proof actually work. I’m amazed at those who speak about God’s perfection then tell me He created the very angel who brought sin to man. And even more so, I am floored by the notion that God knows exactly how I feel. God was never a woman.
Love does not lie down and die just because it’s told it’s not wanted. With every fiber in me, I still love the old boyfriend who broke up with me in his Jeep. It’s illogical, embarrassing, and infuriating, but it is reality. At this moment reality is the only thing I’m interested in.
I believe that God does love me. But I am unashamedly pissed at Him for not taking one moment in eight years to speak to me in a way that I can understand. On the tips of many fingers right now is a list of excuses for God. You will say I have not been listening, that I have not been patient, that He is active and present in my life. But you will only be saying these things because you have not been hit so hard that you come to that place where you wonder why Jesus, Himself, felt forsaken.
I want God to speak for Himself. I believe He can. And maybe He has wanted to all along.
Every Word You Said...
This is for your bad excuse
This is me more than bruised
Hold it to the light; what do you see?
You are what you choose to be
Cause I believed in you
I heard every word you said
You want what‚s true
But lies are in your head
Each time you slept through breakfast
I knew what was on your mind
You said you like my company
And I had all that time
If ever I have loved a man,
I‚m sad you were the one
Cause I believed in your desire
And now look at what it‚s done
I believed in you
I saw every word you said
You want what‚s true
But lies are in your head
All the late night guilty pleasure
You had the balls to sulk
While I put to rest my demons
You saw not me, but my ghost
When all else was confusing
Tell me, how clear was my touch?
It was nothing that you‚d known before
And still was not enough
I believed in you
I saw every word you said
You want what‚s true
But lies are in your head
This is for your bad excuse
This is me more than bruised
Hold it to the light; what do you see?
You are what you choose to be
I believed in you
I saw every word you said
You want what‚s true
But lies are in your head
Lies are in your head
Penny René
Posted by Penny Rene at 03:17 AM | TrackBack