The Questions are Big, the Answers Small

The questions of art are big, but the answers are small:

•  For years I didn't want to write. I wasn't blocked; I just somehow wasn't up to it. Realized that I needed but did not have a comfortable chair to sit in, and that the writing table at home was too high off the floor and uncomfortable to work at. Got some used office furniture that is just right. The chair that fits me best is a child's chair. So what.
• I didn't have the time I needed to practice my art. I began to steal the time. It worked for a long, long time and let me write four books.
• Felt too stressed and sickish to do my art. Hayfever, depression, acid reflux, anxiety, joint pain, etc. Turned 45 and realized I was mortal. Problem solved.
• I too often let good ideas get away because I wanted to be polite or look attentive. Now I switch on the light, get up and write the ideas down. Ideas and strange notions flood me during poetry readings and workshops. Now I take along a notebook and pen. Looks like I'm taking notes. I am!
• My "neat gene," inherited from my mom, tortured me into deep-cleaning the refrigerator and dusting the fan blades when I should have been writing. Answer #1: Sports injury left me immovable and all I could do was write. I found cleaning did not matter. Answer #2: Got well. Budgeted for someone to clean the house once a month. Bonus: When she leaves, the house is clean top to bottom.
• I couldn't get solitude, not even a whole hour alone, because significant other, although a writer himself, didn't like that I shut my door to write. I mean, he took action against it. Applied to writers' colonies where I stayed for a couple of weeks at a time. Relief. Then chucked him. Voila, problem solved.

Invisible Writers

For the past seven weeks I've been reviewing online horoscopes twice a week and posting reviews -- 20 of them now -- that have been read over 2,000 times. I'm an astrology student from way back, and one day started doing this both to write and to perform a public service. I exposed two fake astrologers and dug up the truth for two others, honest and sincere people who had no idea how their work was being exploited. Laugh, but it's no joke: Astrology is big business, and specifically it's a writing business. There are astrology sweatshops where young writers -- the job description solicits recent college grads -- churn out horoscopes according to style sheets. It sounds like the porn factory a schoolmate spent a summer working in, where he was required to write a certain number of sexual acts per page.

Doing this work I'm amazed all over again by how much we depend on the written word for our opinions and personal guidance as well as our education and entertainment. The Internet has made us more dependent on the written word, not less. What we hear on TV, or from politicians, or read on the side of a cereal box, is all scripted. ("Talking heads" go on camera having studied written lists of "talking points"; their ideal is to get us to believe there are no writers behind them at all.) Somebody selected and wrote every word you see. Who says writers are a tiny, powerless minority? How were we ever made to believe that? The sum total of our power just bowls me over.

You Never Know...

When the money or spirit gets low I begin to lose my trust in the universe or whatever gave me the desire to write and some talent. I know it does not give these things and then fail to support you. But things bottomed out about a week ago: Unpleasant bills and notices arrived. My Internet was down for four days. Doctor visits left my arms tracked up like a junkie's. I was draggin' my wagon (and people would have said to me, "Why the long face?" had I bothered to raise my eyes from the pavement). And then in the space of a few days almost everything changed:

• More work -- four almost simultaneous requests -- came my way!
• Internet connection repaired!
  
• Awesome financial news!
• Good health report!
  
• Pushcart Prize nomination (my first, I heard about it yesterday) for a poem to appear in November in the annual Kansas City Voices
• Gift of bagful of pears direct from a tree!
  

O me of little faith!