--I’M A FRAGILE ROCK

 

…It’s funny how a day can swing.  Yesterday morning I got the incredible news that my poetry manuscript had been accepted for publication.  The email title line read ACCEPTED.  It’s a very nice feeling to be accepted.  Isn’t that what everyone wants?

A few hours later I got feedback on two contest entries I’d sent it.  Neither was chosen as a finalist.
The first, a novel I wrote a year ago, got conflicting responses.  One reader loved it, the other not so much (he suggested, kindly, that I work on honing the craft.)
Less than a half hour after that came the second entry, a Young Adult novel I’m about a third of the way through.  Both readers shredded it—no plot or tension, two dimensional (“at best”) characters, slow pacing…
Talk about a seesaw day.  And while I am very accustomed to losing, of course the rejections drowned out the warm feelings of having a third book published, albeit a book of poems, something I’ve desired for quite a while now.  Why is that?  Maybe I’m a fragile rock after all.

…My son called me soon after that.  We had a really nice conversation.  He seemed in a good place.

About thirty minutes later he called back, quite upset, because he hit a pole in the rental car he’s currently driving after having been in an accident a couple of weeks ago (not his fault this time), making it four cars he’s been through by his 20^th birthday.

…It’s actually Thursday as I’m writing this.  I want to let the words breathe a bit before posting them.

It’s not yet 3 pm.  I’m hoping the day can tilt back to this morning’s vibes.  I still have a story entered for that same contest.  I haven’t heard anything, so no news is good news, right?
In any event, life is a jagged line, a game of tug of war, a jump rope, and I can handle it….

-“I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I never had belonged to anything or anyone else.” Marilyn Monroe

-“Every life from the inside seems like a record of failure.” George Eliot

-“We all move uneasily within our restraints.” Kay Jamison

-“The world will not be destroyed by those who do wrong, but by those who sit by and do nothing.” Einstein

-“It is the history of our kindnesses that along makes the world tolerable.” Robert Luis Stevenson

-“If you don’t write a Paul Simon song, who will?” Phillip Glass to Paul Simon

-“Twenty years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift.” Bob Dylan