artist welfare and uncommon courtesy

Went to a workshop on state grants to individual artists last night. Still of two minds on the topic (find a topic I'm not on two minds about)...very interesting. The highlight of the evening was being berated by a local writer for not taking a more active interest in getting my book THE MORGANTOWN SUITE POEMS into local bookstores. I'm the hooker, not the pimp...as it is I feel I spend too much time marketing myself and my books. I write, and if reviewers and critics (I mean the ones who have actually read my stuff) are to be believed, pretty damn good at it. I dislike it when people, unsolicited, try to tell me how to order my existence. (No, not tell me how to do my job, as writing is not my job...it's my existence.)

The fact that this same piece of advice comes from the same person who last year, having never read any of my work, tried to draw a distinction between my work and that of a local professor as that I am not an "academic poet" (and tried to make it seem like somehow, we of more publication credits who do not depend on the public dole and a portion of state monies and student fees to pay our way to presentation and publication are an inferior breed) did not help sell her critique. I don't write for the local audience. Indeed, a higher percentage of people in similar sized sampling areas in India, Australia, Los Angeles (that's a foreign country, isn't it?) and Ireland know my works than here, which is a function of a dysfunctional local culture when it comes to arts above and beyond the institutionally sanctioned forms and craftspersons.

Of course, this then leads me to the fundamental question of wtf I am doing here? (Okay, I know the reasons, but why do I remain? Simple. Family. Here I am closer to my sons than I would be on the West Coast (a fact my ex taunts me with every time I talk about finding a better job and heading back to California...she'd rather it not be easy on me, God knows she wants to beat the crap out of me, financially and emotionally, every step of the way...makes for a good role model...she once told me, in front of her lawyer, that she doesn't want me dead because that would elimante her ability to make my life "a living hell". Nice. I am sure every time I draw breath without pain or smile at a piece of music she feels her life's work is undone.))

Also, my parents are here and advanced in years, don't want to be to far from them. I turned down a very cushy job offer in South Africa several years ago for the same reason (mostly I was talked out of it by my second wife, who I have since learned has a rather excessive boat anchor on her own personal movements). C'est la guerre.

Well, I don't know if the package that I and my parents sent to my sons for their birthday ever got there...no one has called to confirm its arrival. For most people that would mean it has not, but since the grandparents, I believe, are waiting for their thank you for last year's gifts, which I know arrived, we'll assume it has and just standard operating procedures are in place. I have hesitated to call because...well, because I shouldn't have to call to find out if my birthday presents to my sons arrived. I'm tired of being the bridger for the social failings of others, someone else step up for once. I have excused malice, gossip, slander, rudeness, neglect and two faced-ness in so many people in an attempt to be the nice guy (and I get vilified anyway...usually by the more guilty of the crew) but I refuse to make the full turn and start treating others as I have been treated.

Some mornings it is tough not to, though.

Sorry, this damn blocked salivary gland is starting to annoy me (yes, keep me from eating for a day and ask yourself how happy I will be...) so I am being less political and polite than usual. Bark. Bark. Growl.