When I went to college, there were two practical expectations from the world of what I would gain from it: a practical degree that would put me into a job right after graduation, or, an MRS degree.
An MRS degree, in case you can't figure it out by lowering the case on the last two letters, is the equivalent of a husband. "I met my husband in college." Congratulations. I didn't even belong to clubs, events, or ANYTHING extra-cirricular in college; I went to school in the morning, full-time, and taught call center agents in the afternoon and evening. I fed my soul in the morning and burnished it into pure gold in my love of mentorship in the latter parts of the day.
My first lover in California was right when he said, "It was just bad timing for a relationship." I wouldn't have called it
bad timing. I would have called it "do what you love and the rest will follow."
*****
Natalie Goldberg, in her memoir "Long Quiet Highway," talks about the daughter of one of her writing students in one particular passage:
It was April, but unusually cold. My student's daughter was a [horse] trainer. She was twenty-nine years old. She'd fallen the year before. She was hurt badly, recovered, and was back on the horses.
"Do you worry about her?" I asked...
"There's nothing I can do. Once you're in this life, it's the only life. She just lives horses," my student told me and shrugged.
"Does she go out, have relationships?" I asked. I was trying to understand this life.
She smiled. "Nope. She doesn't have time, doesn't care. This is her life."
This is my life.
*****
I bring this up because of two things that occurred at Litquake last weekend. The first thing that happened was getting the opportunity to see writers married/partnered with other writers. The second thing that happened was that two different men hit on me.
Clarification: they hit on me between the short story and novel panels, within minutes of each other. I'll come back to them.
I was struck by the husband/wife, wife/husband partnerships in the panel members because the partners had such widely varying approaches to writing, and still were respected by their partners. I have never had the pleasure to be in a romantic relationship where my method of approach was just as valued as the other and completely different approach. But, then, I've never been in a romantic relationship with a writer. Hell, I've never been in a romantic relationship with a reader. So you can imagine how exotic (and desirable) these partnerships looked to me.
As to the men who hit on me...somewhere, in another lifetime when I was a college student, I could imagine hearing older friends and aunts hoping that I would give both of these men some sort of access to my soul, since I so would love to find another writer to love. But that kind of behavior looks hungry. Mind you, I didn't cut either man off--I asked about them and their writing just as much as they did of me--but I didn't suggest that we form an alliance for dinner or the Litcrawl event later. For a brief moment talking with first one, then later, the other (whom I ended up sitting next to--he looked vaguely like Nathan Fillion, so you would have thought I would have tossed writing out the window) I had a sense that I might get asked for my plans for the evening, but I didn't prepare an answer. See, I live the horses. If either of these gentlemen really wanted a writing partner, or if that was the paramount of my purpose, we would have made it so.
But my purpose was the horses, the words. I live the words. If someone comes along, YAY, but goodness, I'm good without the MRS degree now.
Onward, dear reader.
P.S. -
This song is the inspiration for today's title of Life For Rent. "May I be worthy. Amen."
