ThE KidnEy ThiEf

I’m wired to be emotionally cancerous.  Part of my introversion is a natural desire to not spread
the cancer of me.  So, it’s somehow appropriate to be tracking the growth of my kidneys,
they’re slow, but they don’t stop.  Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) is a genetic incurable,
cystic growth, that will eventually make my kidneys become so large, they fail; think thirty
pounds each. The pictures of the disease progress are cringe-worthy, usually three to four
fleshy panels, with concise arrows and notations, indicating the lifespan of the diseased
kidneys as different than the lifespan of their host. The panels remind me of even more
cringe-worthy Nazi propaganda posters I’ve seen in hanging in Berlin, morphing an average
Jewish face into the face of evil. If kidneys weren’t so cute and rounded, kept in in place by other
organs, bone and muscle, the diseased version of them, might more closely resemble that
fictionalized, sharp-edged, evil-Jew face, of my forebears.

Speaking of iconic rounded pairs, a few Halloween parties ago, a dear drunk lumberjill
for the evening, kept finding me and poking my breasts, saying, “Those aren’t real.  
Those can’t be real.” I was wearing a dark brown brocade corset, under a red and
white checked button-down, tied at the ‘waist’, as part of a proper Dolly Parton costume,
and my breasts were pushed up in the range of my throat, which is definitely
higher than usual.  I do appreciate people who come right out about things, but lumberjill
was kind-of talking to herself, as much as to me, or anyone else within earshot.
I told her a few times that they were real, and not part of my Dolly costume, but
indeed the reason why that one feature of Dolly’s look was so easy to replicate.  
She nodded, kept poking, and saying, “but, they just can’t be real.”

Kidney pain management is a consistent element of my life now, joining the
emotional pain management that my life has always been, not to mention the
breasts since puberty. Like people of different persuasions, who are really
only allowed to evoke their own persuasions, my maternal grandfather is a Polish Jew.  
He married my chesty Spanish-Austrian grandmother, a spinster-nun, to escape
a Nazi filled continent, and even though my grandmother would have preferred the life of a nun,
it didn’t work out that way. Aside from being a non-practicing or identifying with, really, Jew, and descendant of a nun, I have a long list of persuasions to evoke in the story of how I came to be in need of a kidney, and in the end, a kidney thief. I didn't start out stealing kidneys, I started out stealing much smaller things like coveted library books, exquisite cheese danish and at least one of my fathers’ shriveled hearts.

Writing Exercise: Dis.man.tle

Write a paragraph or page where you literally build and or take apart something for your reader.

Dis.man.tle

He died of AIDS in prison.  His height didn’t strike me, because of the metal one-size-fits-all table he was lying on.  His veiny thinness struck me.  I learned that plastic caps are made specifically for eyes and eyelids that won’t stay shut.  The cap is smooth on the concave, eye-cupping side and intimately barbed on the other.  Pop it in, adjust eyelid slightly forward, then back to hook the flesh in place, and if this doesn’t work-- super glue.  

He died of AIDS in prison, and it’s a mortician’s job to prepare the body for viewing, burial or cremation.  A cranked water valve attached to a red hose, and water flowing down the slanted table.  A long incision, cut artery protruding- forced entry and exit.  Then dark sheets of blood draining.  He had defecated, as bodies do, in the end.  It looked healthy for AIDS.  This moved down the table with the blood, as scrub-brush and soap were applied.  His knee bent and lifted easily as rigor mortis had passed.

He died of AIDS, then he ran clear.  Edward’s aquifer water flowing through this man.  His deep coal blackness struck me, and I wondered at the family who would be at his grave, at the food they would eat and the stories they would tell.  But, at that moment, there before me was the shell.

Next in line Ungrateful Bitch Stories

I have my writing on the wall. Now I need to layer case file notes, pictures, letters- no small stack.  

I don’t want to get this out of me.  I want to walk away and ignore it some more.  If only I could throw it up.  Get it over and out like a 24 hour bug, oh yeah baby.  I’d do that.

I’m tired of the weight of it.  How many times to I have to read that the truth will set you free, and yet before the free is some serious horror, with attendant grief and sadness. M

y neighbor warned me not to go too far down the rabbit hole.  Too late it seems.  I grew up in the rabbit hole, so how could a walk down memory lane be any more disorienting?    

I’ll start with recent notes to myself:

“The truth makes me an ungrateful bitch.  Get over it.  

I have to tell the Next in line ungrateful bitch story.  And then  the next.  

What am I avoiding most?  Dive in.  

Ungrateful bitch stories.  

I whored myself for experience and education.  

This section spans the end of book one and the beginning of book two.”

Jesus, just get this out of me.  

Point a Browning Hi-Power at my intellectual capital and threaten something; something bad.  Like having to befriend my actual mother.  My dad still has me all wound up about that, and he’s dead.

I’m an ungrateful bitch.  I know I’m an grateful bitch too, but I have to get through the ungrateful parts first it seems.  It’s just so impolite to be so ungrateful and tell my truth.  It really is, and I’m getting over it, through it, under it, around it, above it and it’s a shit ton of work.

book-writing learnings, for today

1. One chapter due at a time.

2. Life happens.  Reforecast, without losing the learnings.

3. I’ve been advised that if I ever want to publish outside of blog-land, I shouldn’t put more than fifty pages of material, --rough draft or not-- out there.  Only the first page and a one paragraph summary for the remaining chapters, which in the end, looks something like a book proposal.

4. Editing ain’t cheap, but its necessary.  I’ll have more time to work on that fifteen chapters from now, and eventually I’ll explore editing help by working on one chapter with two to three editors, to see how we work together, and to see how things turn out.  I’ve been quoted $50 a page- which looks like $500-$1,000 a chapter.  So conceivably, it could cost ten to twenty thousand for one book.

5.  Once I’ve completed the first draft twenty chapters, I’m interested in seeking input from some of the people in my stories, some of the helpers and guides in my life.  Sounds messy, but that might just be the point.  

6. In researching one of my grandmothers, I came across a book called:  "The Unknown Habsburgs" by David McIntosh. There are some serious royal watchers out there, which reminds me that I should keep a list of potential audiences for the book(s). So far, Foster care alumni, national child welfare community members, social workers, therapists, cult survivors, cult members, ’royal watchers’ round the globe, Texans, Austinites, Coloradans, Goldenites, Native peoples, and all the German, Greek, Spanish, Austrian relatives.   

7.  Its fine for friends to be distracted by comments on my blog, but not me.  Did I mention that friendships are priceless?

8.  As a writer, my version of linear takes lots of twists, turns and loop-de-loops.  

9.  Friendships are priceless.

10.  http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/20/daily-routines-writers/

Echoing E. B. White’s famous admonition that “writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper” and Isabel Allende’s counsel to “show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too,” Ebert shares some invaluable advice:

My colleague late at night, a year or two older, was Bill Lyon, who covered Champaign High School sports and became a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. … Bill and I would labor deep into the night on Fridays, composing our portraits of the [football] games. I was a subscriber to the Great Lead Theory, which teaches that a story must have an opening paragraph so powerful as to leave few readers still standing. … Lyon watched as I ripped one sheet of copy paper after another out of my typewriter and finally gave me the most useful advice I have ever received as a writer: ‘One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damn thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it’s going?’ These rules saved me half a career’s worth of time and gained me a reputation as the fastest writer in town. I’m not faster. I spend less time not writing.