Is Optimism Real?

What about rhetorical questions?

I didn’t even pass go this morning what with the new coffee pot I can program for 5:15 so when I slide by at 5:30 Bob’s my uncle.

So no more waiting I just have to let Daisy out and she does her rounds – although sometimes they’re dead straight, often a slight curl, and once in a blue moon they actually stand up – I have photos

When she’s back inside I go to my room and close the door and usually I get straight to the words but sometimes like yesterday I shop so today the stick and peel wallpaper or it must be peel and stick for the kitchen cabinets will be delivered but you see my calling is higher today because I woke up with a brand new shiny idea.

Look!

I don’t know if you read them but I posted a story or two from the collection I recently learned I can call a Novella-in-Flash, The Beatniks Next Door, it’s totally finished now and I love it and so am leaving it alone while I see where the feelers I sent out go and am now on another project my sister reminded me of the other day – you’re not going to take that to your grave are you? – she said insinuating that I’m going to die some day.

It was Clutterbucks she was talking about so I dug it out again, the novel I started writing at the beginning of the pandemonium. I wrote a chapter a week and posted it here and when it was finished I had 60,000 words in weekly installments so I cut and pasted them all together and admired it for a while before I moved on to another idea.

Which is an undiagnosed problem I have except it’s actually only a problem sometimes like when I don’t pay bills or stand the dentist up or find things like stick and peel wallpaper that’s been under my bed or weirder places for who knows how long and I roll my eyes and put it right back.

Most times though it’s a problem I want because life here is overflowing with never dull moments and I’m wont to keep busy now there’s a word you don’t see every day

Anyway it’s a comedy this novel I dug up, about a swindler who owns an antique store and acquires her merchandise in an unusual way causing pickle after pickle and it’s populated with wonderful people also weird and it started out as a sit-com and will, I hope, end that way too because you see I am a run-on optimist, an olympian on the keyboard which just is a show-offy way of saying I can type faster than you and have spellcheck on my side motly anyway.

Funny thing is, well, funny thing is it makes me laugh since it was a pretty quick write and mostly I’ve forgotten the jokes. And it’s fast-paced and full of cliffhangers I haven’t seen the likes of since the summer of JR. Also it’s tender you know without being sappy, okay maybe it’s a bit sappy, and it made me cry here and there because I forgot the heart-stringing parts too..

Do you think optimism can be a condition?

I do and I’ve got it and this might sound like madness but here’s my plan, well, maybe it’s more of an idea. Here’s my idea

I already wrote the pilot for the sit-com you see so I am turning it into a stage play, a 1.5 hour long play, ending it at the best cliffhanger ever you did see, and then I’ll have the book, obv. polished perfect (and published) for sale in the lobby, and you’ll never guess but at the end of the book the main character, the proprietor, Daphne, of the antique store is asked by a television network executive she met through a series of events mostly held together with heart and soul and surprise and humour, but she’s asked to create a sit-com based on her life, her friends, and the store where it all goes down, Clutterbucks.

So you know, what can go wrong?

That’s rhetorical, motherfucker.

Did I mention I work at a media company with two television stations and a STAGE as in THEATRE?

I am writing the proposal which I am mostly optimistic about with moments of stark terror just like when you’re on a jet.

So why this idea would come to me this morning about another collection, this one called The Shrinks Next Door, I don’t know but here just for fun is the first story in The Shrinks Next Door if you want to read it and if you don’t here it isn’t.

The Shrinks Next Door – Tammy

Anybody called Tammy I can’t help the visual I get spider eyes and so I got to tell you I cringed when Jan the receptionist said the doctor will see you now Tammy right this way but there was something about her footsteps next to Jan’s shuffle reminded me of the Barbie I had when I was a kid, the little red stilettos she wore I used to say click! click! click! and when I thought of her this way the spiders went away in favour of painted sleepy eyes, a blonde do just a couple of bobby pins short of a beehive, and a pink plastic van parked on the street – what was it called?

Anyway I move the glass off that wall and put it over the sweet spot on the adjacent one, pull up the pouf and put my pad of paper on my knee, take the pen from behind my ear, you see I don’t have to hold the glass but use pressure from my head so I can catch every word and steno away.
  
It’s always the introductions at first they decide what to call each other where to put her purse where she should sit or if she should lie down like I guess in the movies, you know, as if he’s going to put her in a trance like the Dr. Penfield, I smell burnt toast one or something.

He doesn’t offer anything just gets right to it like he’s a surgeon.

It’s always trauma of course nobody’s going to sit there and get cut open for anything less. I mean sometimes they offer it right up, show him where to make the first incision, but other times it’s more insidious and requires exploratory surgery and that’s the kind I like.

Barbie Bus! It was called a Barbie Bus.

Much of the trauma is the childhood kind which I enjoy, unless it is of a sexual nature in which case I’ll remove the glass and wait for the next patient. When the trauma is pure as in from a parent who couldn’t help it or seemed to not even know they inflicted it, I’m all ears.

My mom made all the Barbie clothes for my sister and me. When I think back on it now she was the real thing, the OG designer. They were beautiful, those dresses, so intricate, real darts and everything, cinched waists, very shapely. She added lace to some, other embellishments too, and even sewed a pearl necklace on the long pink satin number. She knew we’d change the clothes all the time – our Barbies were busy bees! – so each snap had four bundles of stitches since we weren’t careful although not as reckless as she predicted.

Childhood trauma means different things to different people and is perhaps too common, too general a term, because what some think is trauma is a walk in the park for others. I mean take Tammy for instance she said her father never paid attention to her blah blah blah. What I thought was more interesting was right away the shrink asked about her mother, you know, did she get attention from her mother which in my opinion doesn’t matter when she clearly felt she was neglected by her father. It’s like saying I’m thirsty and somebody saying take a bath.

I don’t know how she did it my busy mother you know with us and my brother and my dad out of town all the time and she didn’t drive but marched us all to the grocery store and the laundry mat, etc. yet she found time to fiddle with elaborate dresses so small she could fit them on her hand which she did, placing the knuckles of her first two fingers where Barbie’s tits would go so she’d get the darts right and I'd die laughing inside.

Usually with women they are unable to love the right kind of men due to absent fathers blah blah blah. They cry about being ignored and the shrink’s no help he doesn’t say oh for chrisssssake don’t be such a baby.

It’s the cruel mothers I like – wait don’t get me wrong – I don’t mean the Sybil kind of cruel, but the others, the ones whose behaviour isn't exactly awful but their damaged daughters lie on the other side of the wall as the shrink next door pokes and prods with question marks like scalpels. Some of what he asks seem to me likesuggestions, you know, and eventually they say ouch indicating the well which is either bone dry (fake ouches) or a geyser, you never know – it’s fascinating – I can’t write fast enough and shorthand doesn’t cover those phonics.

I’m not a moron about it or anything, I mean the Barbie to whom I aspire is old as me now, we grew up together, but you see she’s always been better at everything – she’s even better at aging – she’s still got her figure, her skin’s not sun- and whateverelse-damaged like mine and pretty sure she’s had some work done on those eyes I wonder where she got the money probably my father.