Happy fourth of July. We purchased some fireworks, which are not illegal here like they are in Platte. My sister will be coming down to stay with us tomorrow, and we will light the fireworks in our cul-de-sac like we used to when we were kids. She’s staying with my father and stepmother this weekend; and it was made clear to us that Persis, Burt, and I weren’t expected to join them. Too much stimulation for Babs, I guess.

Distractions.

On Saturday I went to synagogue for the first time in a long time. There’s a Reconstructionist temple here, and I’m intent upon joining it. They offer “Tot Shabbats” on Friday evenings, so I will begin the indoctrination of my darling son ASAP. Since we decided not to circumcise him, I’m all the more determined to have him start at an early age being exposed to Judaism in a positive way. I hope that his experience through his Bar Mitzvah (God willing) is better than mine, and that he doesn’t have to go through the exile and return that I did, though that may have had just as much to do with who I was as it did with the particular program that I participated in.

It was nice to sit in the synagogue and feel myself in the presence of God…I use these high-flying phrases as if they really mean something. They do, only in the sense that they are trying to attain, achieve, whatever, some union with a signified that is a feeling. A feeling of …this is like trying to put into words the feeling that I got…get…when Burt says, “Hot.” It’s a feeling of one’s thoughts being heard by someone who cares and who can help, rather than just circulating around in one’s head aimlessly. I sat there, alone (last weekend, we tried to take Burt to Sat. morning services and decided that it was not happening any time in the near future, and that Persis would, in the future, watch Burt while I went. Persis doesn’t care for synagogue, or Judaism, all that much.), reflecting on how I feel like I’m in a place of similar helplessness as I was when I first starting going to Temple Israel years ago…I could try and pinpoint the number of years, but it would only take up time, and who really cares? I remember feeling at times as I sat there at Temple Israel that I was coming back to God, to Judaism, because I didn’t know where else to go. Therapy was helpful but not a cure-all, psychiatry was helpful but not a cure-all. And I know I’ve now written cure-all twice, but I don’t know that I’m really looking for that. I’m really looking, and was looking back then, for something that would take the pain of living away. Another phrase that I garnered from elsewhere that is more self-referential than anything. I say pain of living. I have heard of some book called, “When Living Hurts.” And that’s what I think of when I write that “pain of living” phrase. In other words, I am thinking of a title of a book that resonated for me as being an effective reference to a feeling that I have sometimes, rather than to the feeling itself. The pain of living that I refer to is a generalized sense of displeasure, moribund-ity (we are all moribund, aren’t we, but I mean more “bound for blackness, or mediocrity, or failure”), futility, lost promise. And I do things like the other day, when I received an anniversary card (Persis’s and my fourth anniversary was this week, on July 1) from my step-grandmother that wishes us enjoy or child and our house and all the exciting things in our life. And all I can think of is the irony of how all these supposedly exciting things in our life right now are all sources of frustration, sytmied-ness, and dissatisfaction for me. And then I wonder if that’s just the way life is, or if I’m really depressed again, and that my medications are again no longer working. Shouldn’t I be taking some joy in what’s going on around me, rather than being a total grouch at all times except when my Neurontin (mood-stabilizer, grumpiness remover, commonly referred to as my “happy pills”) is operative? I’ve become totally dependent on the medication in the sense that I am really no fun to live with (for myself or others) when I have not taken it. But increasingly I feel like the general tone of my mood is a fiery black. This is the distinction between what my depression felt like when it was first coming on and what it feels like these days. And I don’t know whether it is a product of some changed biochemistry, an effect of my medication, my imagination, circumstances…or whether it doesn’t really matter what the tone of my moods are, that thinking about this stuff is more than anything a product of my social class, since if I was poor I wouldn’t have the luxury of sitting for an hour every Sunday, writing to my $200-an–hour shrink, writing on spec a screenplay about the confrontation between pornography and abstinence, and being supported by my wife, pondering whether the tonal color of my mood was more deep blue or fiery black. But since I’m here, what I mean by fiery black is this hair-trigger tempered moroseness in which the world is pretty much irremediably uninteresting and unattractive, and anything anybody does (including me) to get in my way sets me off on a growling jag.

So I was sitting in synagogue and feeling that sense of tears coming to my eyes when I realize that I am not alone, and that there is someone who can listen to my troubles and understand them. This is sort of what I’m getting at when I talk about experiencing…or being in the presence of God. I also feel the same sense of deep submission to a will that is greater than mine because I know that my own will is insufficient to help me attain what I want. I find myself praying that the screenplay I am writing will not just molder in a drawer, because the fact that it is taking the time it is taking is deeply prejudicial to my self-esteem. I feel like a huge loser these days, cause I am creeping along, procrastinating as I write very little each day (enough to maintain progress, but not enough to finish as quickly as I want to, and especially not enough to endow my efforts with the urgency that I feel about them). (Please bear with me if my sentences here are getting a little sloppy; I’m not trying think about my feelings too much before I write them, so often I am stumbling over the words that I am using to best express what I am feeling. Syntax goes out the window.) The truth is that when I write, I alternate between short spurts of writing, and generally longer spurts of other stuff (bills, calls, etc.). And as much as I try to get rid of the other stuff, I find that it is necessary for me to maintain my focus on the writing. Like looking away from a bright light every so often, or something like that, in order to maintain focus. That’s a bad analogy…anyway, fill in the blank, I hope you know what I’m saying. And I have this thing about pacing myself: I often set tasks for the day that are stupidly small, then refuse to do more if I complete them, or pace the day (my “day” is four hours in the morning while Burt is at daycare) so that I finish them right about the time that my time is up. These are traits that I wish I could change, but I find that when I try to force myself to do so, it often impacts my self-esteem in bad ways, since I am often not using my concentration very effectively. And of course, I don’t get done the things that I need to get done in the course of the day, so inevitably I end up frustrated and pressured because other stuff is getting away from me, even as my writing is proceeding apace. I am very ashamed of this. And it’s one of those things that my oblique conversations with other writers suggests is not unusual. But there’s still the problem of kicking back and writing for four hours a day while my wife supports me. And there’s the issue of money. Certainly, after selling the Croesus house, we are not strictly lacking cash, but a bunch of that I want to save to invest, and I feel like…Persis and I are still worried that we will not be able to live within the bounds of her salary (88K) and the 50K that I’ve set aside for our living expenses this year. So that makes the writing thing, and all the more so with my lackadaisical attitude toward it, all the more of a folly.

And then there’s the depression, if that’s what it is. And it all amounts to my feeling helpless and wanting to submit myself to a higher power, something that is able to carry me through this hard time and out the other end transformed and successful. I think about other showbusiness families and how at this point in their lives they’re not necessarily set for life. There’s no reason that the fact that I’m struggling needs to mean that I am doomed to mediocrity and failure. I just pray that it doesn’t; and most of the time I feel like I can do nothing more than pray.

I feel like the time that I spent at Temple Israel years ago, praying for deliverance from the hard time that I was going through then, was helpful. Not necessarily that my prayers were answered, though it is very tempting to think this way (I’m amazed at…or not amazed, sometimes dismayed, as how attractive the abandonment of rationality is, and what a feat of will it is not to go there), but that it helped me ride out the bad wave.

Will I really never experience pride or glory again? Is my son the only thing I will ever be proud of from now on? Have I really ruined my life by having a kid? I feel like the idea that I’m working on is good, and that (in fact) I am writing better than I have ever written (procedure-wise, I mean; I mean, that my instrument is looser, like knees on skis, my instrument has eased up over time to more effectively handle the bumps), just not very fast or urgently.

I pause to observe that this was the first week of writing, these five days, one of which was essentially lost to house stuff. And I’m really giving myself a hard time for a brief window, and that last week when I wrote to you I hadn’t even started writing yet.

I wonder what reading these is like for you. Do you see themes come in like waves washing over earlier ones, mixing with them?

Anyway, so with seven minutes or so left, I am back to this feeling of needing help, and of wanting to recommit myself to weekly attendance of synagogue, both for me…for my sake and for Burt’s sake.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to continue with you. I hope it will be some time, but the issue came up as Persis and I were trying to budget out the year. I need to sit down and make a budget, but it’s hard still because of our change in circumstances, and having spent so much money recently trying to get the house set up, it’s hard to know what our spending patterns will be once we settle in. Though I guess the point of a budget is to estimate when spending should be, not just reflect what spending is, so what am I waiting for? I have to do our taxes this month, since we were in the middle of moving in April and I got an extension. And then there’s the real estate studying, which I’ve been able to do almost none of since I got here.

Babs I think has this idea that I’m actually aspiring to be a real estate agent. She thinks I have the talents necessary, but she’s also the one who once said to me, with a note of frustration in her voice (as if she were giving tough love – in fact, I secretly believe that this is what all of my family wants to say to me) that if the writing thing were going to happen it would have happened already. I hate her for that; perhaps also because I know that…believe that the rest of my family shares that feeling. I can tell in their voices when I talk to them about the writing. They are humoring me, hoping for the best, but not wanting to alienate me by saying that they don’t think I will have any success. That is perhaps another thing I am looking for in this thing I call the presence of God: someone I can have faith in to have faith in me. Someone who believes I can do it even when I myself do not. There is no one in this world who does…perhaps some of my friends, but I need support. And that is what I feel when I go to synagogue, that I am engaged in a struggle that is worthwhile and which I will emerge from having grown and grateful for the experience. Note that I am not insisting upon success, though I would of course not mind that. “Would it spoil some vast, eternal plan / If I were a wealthy man?”