For the past two days I have woken up exceptionally happy after experiencing long, deep, delicious sleeps. The night before last I dreamt that dancing would cure my knee, the bed was an utter disaster proving that I was dancing away in my sleep, The absolute joy of sleeping alone – even if ever I was in a ‘relationship’ again (extremely doubtful) I would sleep alone. Sleep research shows that it is necessary to sleep alone in order to get a decent night’s sleep. One can always visit the other’s room before or after sleeping, if you get my drift. If one types sleep into the search engine of this blog you can get more information. For example the November 17, 2018 blog cites studies showing that sleep reduces anxiety. But sleep is a subject often explored as shown by the vast number the search engine produces. I never set an alarm as i am an habitual early riser. This morning I did not wake up until 10 – very surprising but very delicious, and I gave myself a lazy day not going to water aerobics or anything. Two factors are at play at the moment – giving up striving for perfection and a certain person’s absence from this country are two causes for contentment.
The New Yorker has a fascinating article, written by Eren Obey, about sixty-five year old Joyce. Maynard’s return to undergraduate studies at Yale. “Spending time with her among fellow-students on campus, I often forgot that she is older than my mother.” Maynard was a freshman in 1971 but dropped out to have a relationship with J.D. Salinger, who was thirty-five years her senior. The affair lasted for all of eleven months. She did go on to lead a productive life, publishing more than 15 books, getting married twice and raising three children. She settled, living “outside San Francisco”, and was the primary ‘bread winner’ for most of her life She kept her silence, not revealing the Salinger affair respecting his intense need for privacy but did write a memoir some thirty years later to much criticism from critics and Salinger admirers. “ For over thirty years,” she writes, Salinger has “sought his protection in privacy and silence.” Maynard, on the other hand, comes to find her “greatest protection” in self-disclosure: “It’s shame, not exposure, that I can’t endure; I’ve lived with so much of it. It’s the things people don’t talk about that scare me.” If she narrates her own insecurities, she reasons, who in the end can threaten to expose her? “I am surely not the only woman who made herself throw up everyday, or flew into a rage at her children, or who felt abandoned by love,” she writes. Her advice to fledgling writers is to write like an orphan forgetting what parents, or anyone else, will make of your work. That is wise advice, which I follow. There are other similarities between the two of us. “Like Holden Caulfield, who railed against phonies, or Franny Glass, the precocious liberal-arts student of Salinger’s imagination, Maynard seemed to have a knack for calling bullshit.”Then there is this: “One student who shares a class with Maynard told me, a bit snidely, that she sometimes seems more vocal in the classroom than the professor himself” That will not be me at Sotheby’s Institute of Art because the subject matter is unfamiliar and I can shut up and be a good listener. Maynard faced a massive amount of criticism for her published works and she placed herself on Facebook and read all of the negative comments, unlike the protected me. Reading about the criticism caused me to have qualms about publication, which I am seriously considering. But I guess I can take it and I do not have to make a living from the sale of my books.
By the way, Maynard and I have our differences. The author writes of being invited for a dinner of soup and brussell sprouts. Never in a million years would I serve brussell spouts. Maynard found love quite unexpectedly, her short second marriage ended when he died in her arms of pancreatic cancer. She dealt with her massive grief by getting out of bed and writing a book about his disease and death. That will not happen to me.
On a lighter note I shall pass on David’s utterly politically incorrect jokes and a cartoon sent my David’s partner Greg. It does look like Greg reads my blog, otherwise he would not know of my awful habit of providing definitions of words.
British humour – ABSOLUTELY POLITICALLY INCORRECT
Police in London have found a bomb outside a mosque..
They’ve told the public not to panic as they’ve managed to push it inside.
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During last night’s high winds an African family was killed by a falling tree.
A spokesman for the Birmingham City council said “We didn’t even know they were living up there”.
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Jamaican minorities in the UK have complained that there are not enough television shows with minorities in mind, so Crimewatch is being shown 5 times a week now.
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I was reading in the paper today about this dwarf that got pick pocketed.
How could anyone stoop so low.
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I was walking down the road when I saw an Afghan bloke standing on a fifth floor balcony shaking a carpet.
I shouted up to him, “what’s up Abdul, won’t it start?”
