Category Archive

As was made unfortunately clear in my last post, uncertainty is not something I deal with especially well.  It looks like J will be living part-time in Richmond.  For real.  He wants to look at apartments, condos and the like once I get back from a much-needed vacation in August.  He wants me to move there, too; to find something new, and just start over. 

Sometimes that idea sounds really good.  Most of the time, actually; divorce myself from all the losers here at work, get out of the city (but still be close), and be in love and have some room to breathe. 

I do really well with ideas.  I get excited and plan and it’s all sunshine and lollipops.  It’s the looming certainty of it–and in fact the inherent uncertainty of it–that’s getting me drunk on irrationality (and, oh yeah, tequila). The grandiose ideas in the map of my mind don’t translate so well into reality, I have found.  What would I do there?  Where would I live? I won’t live with him–not until we’re at least engaged–but is now the right time?  And there I go again.  The idea of being Mrs. J is so, so lovely to me.  But I think the recent influx of so many friends getting engaged and married and this climate of Weddings! Weddings! Weddings! has gotten me all turned around.  I still like the idea of marrying him. It’s just the all-of-the-sudden very real prospect that’s got me cowering. 

Happily, some things do respond well to careful planning, and are known, and follow their course as they should.  Like the Nordstrom Sale.  Oh, the oasis of sale shoes and suits and back-to-school-ish clothes!  It’s been in my calendar since, well, since I got the calendar, which works out to slightly over six months ago. 

I think it’s genetic.  Mom used to plan our family vacations around the sale. 

Happily, the stores here aren’t near the warzones that they are in Seattle, so my shopping experience tonight resembled what one might find on an ordinary Saturday back home.  People, but not too many.  No lines for the dressing rooms.  No numbers handed out in the shoe department.  That sort of thing.   

Tonight’s goal was primarily to cruise through, and get the lay of the land.  I bought the MOST ADORABLE suit, here:

I’ll try to hit it up again next Monday because they bring out new things during the second week.  Not a lot.  But some.  I used to work there; I can confirm the truth of this chocolate morsel.  I might even be nice and invite my non-car-owning Seattle friend out for that last encounter.  Because really, it’s kind of too good to keep all to myself. 

And, I suppose, at the end of the day, a balance of certainty and uncertainty, planned shopping and spontaneous friendship, isn’t so bad at all.  It’s probably just about the way it should be. I can’t live my life with the precision of a well-executed shopping weekend, and if I’m honest, I don’t think I’d want to.  I’m working on being okay with whatever life brings.  It’s a process.

I don’t know when I became so wildly paranoid about my relationship with J. Some minutes, I’m naming our children and everything is bliss. Should one cloud pass over the sun, however? It’s over, it’s a sign, we weren’t actually meant to be after all. I really don’t think I’ve always been this edgy, so fickle with the feelings I’m so quick to call strong.

Take Sunday, for instance. In the morning, I’m amusing myself by looking at engagement rings (and matching wedding bands!) on the tiffany website. By nightfall, I’m bickering with J outside of my car over a bottle of wine, which was a totally ridiculous back-and-forth scene that ended with me telling him I am having “serious doubts” about the relationship. I don’t even know if that’s true. I’m a bad arguer; when I start to feel like I’m losing, I pull out the biggest punches I can muster. And it’s been happening more and more.

I’m not used to arguing with anyone other than my sisters. We used to fight fiercely and, I later learned, regularly sent mom to bed in tears, convinced she’d failed as a parent by raising three children who routinely professed undying hatred for each other. We’re all friends now, incidentally, so maybe it’s not such a big deal? I don’t know. I never argued much with any other boyfriends (like, not at all), and I feel like this could go a couple of different ways. J could be the real deal, like family, and we’re still just growing up and I’m feeling vulnerable. Equally compelling, he’s a bad clash with my personality and it may never resolve.

J isn’t one to hold a grudge, thankfully, and while I have a fiery temper, it subsides. I love this guy, I do. We got together last night; he picked me up and we went to Costco (oh happy oasis). He’s going to put some Connecticut in me and teach me to play tennis this summer, and we were looking for rackets.

My tennis experience is, shall we say, limited. I love to watch matches on tv, but that’s mostly because I like the whoosh-and-snap sounds and the british announcer-man’s voice. I’m also quite partial to Wimbledon, the Kirsten Dunst movie, but this similarly is a poor substitute for actually getting out on the court.

They didn’t have rackets at Costco.

I sent him an email today, with a link to a sports store nearby. I signed it “tennis love, magda.”

Only later did that british announcer man pop back into my head, reminding me that in tennis, love is zero.

Why? Why is love zero? I feel like this symbolism bodes badly. I’ve backed myself into a love-love corner: but win-win, like love enough to go around, or totally nill? The distinction, at least in my current mindset, is quite troubling.

Sometimes it’s really hard to condense all of my thoughts into a coherent post: sometimes a cohesive theme is hard to find, and everything I want to say seems impossible to confine in the perfect lines and pre-set margins of this page. 

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in northern Virginia; an excellent Sunday afternoon where it’s just me, my laptop, a novel, mellow music and sunlight making the old wood floors glow.  The trees outside are pink: Spring is definitely on the way.  We’re coming out of the woods. 

J and I went to drinks last night with our newly engaged friends.  They had invited us to dinner, as well, but J—anticipating, kindly, my sensitivity on the issue—invented plans for us.  I don’t want to be jealous of them anymore, and I don’t want to feel hurt that she told J, but not me, that they had gotten engaged.  Still, it’s hard. 

I played nice, and we had a good time.  Her ring was beautiful, they had a cute engagement story, and she spent a lot of time telling me how we’ve got to get together and hang out sometime.  I can’t decide if she’s just being nice or if she really means it.  I’ve had plenty of pseudo-friends who were really more for show: “oh, so good to see you, let’s do drinks sometime, yes, I’ll call you” friends where it’s mutual understanding that all of our promises are figurative.  Of course we won’t get together, and of course she won’t call.  That’s just how it is. Once I start to accept that about this girl, it doesn’t break my heart so much when she rebuffs me. 

The thing of it is, I haven’t made too many real friends out here.  I really wanted to add her to that small grouping.  Que sera sera, though, right?

I was doing well with this laissez-faire attitude until she started discussing her wedding plans.  She wants to get married this fall, in Charlottesville.  Although I certainly never told her, that was my plan first.  A fall wedding in Charlottesville was definitely my plan first.  B!tch won’t be able to get married in the UVA chapel, though, because you have to reserve it a year in advance, and weekends in the fall are on a lottery system depending on the home football schedule.  It’s possible I’ve looked into this.

Two Irish car bombs and four Guinness pints later (it was a St. Patrick’s day special weekend), it didn’t seem so bad.  In fact, it seemed kind of funny.

It was significantly less funny when J and I woke up, I ever so slightly hung over, at 10.52.  And Palm Sunday Mass started at 11.  There was a time in the not-so-distant past when J would have said, hey, screw it, we won’t make it.  I think he’s coming around to seeing how important this whole faith thing is to me, though, and it was on his impetus that I threw on my clothes, tied up my hair, and quickly washed the sleep off of my face.  We normally go to a church farther out, but there is a parish pretty much right across the street from his apartment that quickly became our destination du jour.

By the time we rolled in, about 10 minutes past the hour, it was packed.  Standing room only.  We were literally standing out in the narthex with a whole little crowd of “couldn’t get here early enough” miscreants, craning our necks to hear what was going on. 

About a half hour in I really felt like I was going to pass out.  It was hot, I’d been standing, I hadn’t eaten anything and had had no caffeine.  I’m a serious addict, for those of you keeping score at home.  Things started looking splotchy.  I was trying really hard to focus, but I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and I really thought I was about to lose it.  

I have fainted exactly once in my life; it was in San Francisco last year while waiting for a table in a packed restaurant with my godparents.  I hadn’t eaten, I was still on DC time, and it was hot and crowded.  That’s a sure-fire way to get a table immediately, fyi; pass out in the bar after they say it’ll be at least a 45 minute wait.  About a million hot guys offered to escort me outside for some air, too, though I doubt that would have been the result at mass. 

Rather than finding out for sure, I elbowed my way out, and sat on the curb for a while to get myself together.  I resurfaced just in time for communion, and J and I bolted after that for some very tasty Vietnamese soup down the street.  Things started looking up from there. 

Maybe I’ll get married in the fall, and maybe I won’t. Maybe it’ll be soon, and maybe it won’t.  But regardless, I have so much good in my life that drowning it all for minor frustrations and disappointments hardly seems worth it.  

A friend of mine just got engaged.  Last night, I think, though I wouldn’t exactly know since she announced it by sending out a mass e-mail to everyone in the world including my boyfriend but not me.  This really could have been well-intentioned: of course she knew he’d tell me.  And she and her now-fiance were friends with him first, anyway.  She has my e-mail, though, and it’s not like she’s never used it.  It’s right there next to my cell number in her blackberry, I imagine.  Whatever. 

J just called me at work, apparently under the impression that I knew.  I could say that the feelings of sadness/loss/abandonment I’m trying (frantically) to conceal and smother under file folders and piles of work are because I feel left out of the loop, but that isn’t quite it.

I’m jealous. This jealousy is upsetting, and as much as I know that it’s ridiculous, I still can’t seem to quash it.  If I was single, it would make a lot more sense for me to sit here and say, woe is me, I’ll never be that happy.  I’m not, though; I’m happy and content with J.  I’m comfortable in the assumption that I’m going to marry him someday, when the time is right, when we’ve worked through what we’ve worked through and are more on the track of “ready.” 

 Ready is not yet; for us to get engaged right now would be unwise, for lots of reasons. I should be secure in this, right, and happy for her? One would think.  However, my mental self-portrait at the moment stars an alarming image of a diamond-hungry seething little fanged monster.  It isn’t pretty.

Engagements are happy, yes?  I should be gushing, yes?  This couple is living together.  They’re totally in love and I know she’s wanted to get married for a long time.  So what’s wrong with me?  I’m the kid who spends the whole super-fun party crying in the corner because it isn’t my birthday, and as a consequence misses out on all the cake.   

I only hope I would have been happier if she herself would have called.  I think it was something about hearing from J; hearing something I want so badly fall out of his mouth but about someone else.

I felt like slamming the phone down, hastily leaving work, and heading across the street for the maximum amount of alcohol the friendly bartenders can fit in a martini glass.  I don’t even feel like me. 

“Magda?” J said to my silence.  “Are you there?”

Am I?  

In Japan (I am told), Valentine’s day is a girls-only affair.  It’s only the girls in line for chocolates, ordering flowers, and gushing out their love in poems and e-mails and pink and lace sealed letters. They set their eyes on their man, and they make it as clear as possible that they’re in it, that they love him, that he’s wanted.

A full month later comes March 14, White Day.  This is when the men reciprocate: if it’s committed, they show their love back; if it’s new, they either return your affections or not. 

On the one hand, this seems extremely aggravating.  A whole month of waiting to see if he likes you back!  Unfair, too, in the sense that the girl sets the bar: he has a measuring stick and the advantage of already knowing just exactly how far he needs to go to match (or top) her.

On the other hand, though, there’s an order to this system that seems a bit appealing.  You know precisely what’s expected, and you know that, whoever you are, on this one day your affections need to be unilaterally directed to your other.

So that, say, when one party says hey, come over, I’ll make a surprise dinner, you know from the outset that this is all about you, and you can relax uninhibited, basking in the glow of love.  Without these distinctions, you may well find yourself peeling potatoes and clearing the table; being a co-pilot and getting in the way.  No problem: but, really, not much different from any other night.

If you had some parameters, you wouldn’t let your imagination and your expectations get the better of you.  You wouldn’t ruin a perfectly acceptable night of cooking a deux because it lacked the glamour you’d mentally imposed.  You wouldn’t let your disappointment show on your face (despite being one for whom this is a practical inevitability), and you certainly wouldn’t end the night crying.  Tears on Valentine’s day are just a bummer all around.

In magda-land, the day after Valentine’s, V-1, is hereby decreed black day.  This is where you say you’re sorry for being selfish, for being petty, and for failing to communicate.  You apologize for overlooking all the good, and drowning out the effort undertaken on your behalf because it didn’t align with your internal assignations of the perfect.  You say that you know your love is strong enough, and even if you peel potatoes forever, it’s worth it.  That’s what you say.

Is it possible to be haunted by someone who doesn’t even know you exist? Phrased differently, I think I have some borderline-psychotic jealousy issues.

J is the first boyfriend out of the not altogether large pool of my past that I’d call “serious”–at least as far as that term connotes something more than long-term. He’s the first one with whom I’ve really seen it working, really working for the long haul. From an objective perspective, then, it doesn’t make much sense that about the time I fell in love, I contracted a raging case of insecurity. Or maybe it was just that the insecurity I’ve always had crept out of dormancy once I started believing that I was wanted, loved, cherished that much. Either way, it doesn’t make much sense.

Before me, J had a string of attractive and pseudo-serious girlfriends. If I would have had this blog last fall, it would have chronicled me finding their photos on his laptop, finding emails from them archived on his back-up hard drive, and finding some of their numbers in his cell phone. All that’s over and done with. Well, except for the damage to my psyche that comes with actually knowing. You can imagine all the Ones Before, but until you actually know, it’s relatively easy to block it out. I’m not proud of snooping around his computer and his phone. It was wrong, but my insecurity is a ravenous and hungry beast. It needed to fuel itself to keep me feeling inadequate. 

After many tears and false-positive breakup threats, J destroyed the evidence. I can’t in all fairness say I don’t sometimes still pop into his photo library while he’s in the shower or scan his text messages when I find his phone, but I’m working on it. I’ve found absolutely nothing incriminating.

Still, one of these “befores” haunts me. The Other One wasn’t his most recent, but she was his most serious. They lived together.

I’ve seen her photos and I’ve read her words, and as much as I try to banish her from my mind—he’s mine now, bitch, so back off—I think her ghost is here to stay. I find this terribly disturbing.

He made the mistake a little while back of telling me where she went to school. I think this was in one of my especially low moments, when I was practically begging for details on her. I wanted to know everything (or so I thought); I wanted to see that I was better (which, with my mindset, would have been impossible).

Enter again the ravenous beast of insecurity. Armed now with her first name and her law school, I found her. Ah, the Internet–my friend, my foe. Only one girl with her name graduated within the two year window of when I guessed she had (psychotic? me? never). She went on to pass the bar in Florida, I found, and is now a PARTNER in a law firm there. I saw her picture and read her bio. She’s still gorgeous. And perky. And smart. And successful. The list goes on.

More than anything, I wish I didn’t know. Now that I do, however, I’ve got to find a way to manage this information, and I’m pretty much sucking at it.

J and I went to the national zoo for the first time this weekend. I was like a little kid once I saw the map. Look! They have monkeys! And pandas! And wow, let’s go to the elephant house!

“Tell me you’ve been to the zoo before,” J says, jokingly, and of course I have. Just not this zoo. And not with him. He goes on to tell me, of course, that he’s been there “a couple of times.”

My masochistic minds translates this as “on dates.” With girls. Specifically, with the Other One. They met here in DC when they were both summer interns (Why do I know this? I don’t want to know this!).

I really spent the entire afternoon in a funk. All I could think about was J and the Other One, standing where I was standing, holding hands, laughing and being in love. It’d be summer; she’d be in something adorably sexy and slinky. I looked down at my gloved hands, my chunky sweater, my tennis shoes, and frowned. She’d be sophisticated, I thought, and here I am getting giddy just reading about the elephant house. She’d be everything I’m not.

But I was there, I was in that moment. I was everything she was not, and I blew it. I had a so-so time, but I could have made him happy, made him feel alive and in love the same way she did in my mind. Sometimes, though, this jealousy is an unbearable weight. I want to shake it, but I just can’t see out. It is miserable. And I need to stop googling her. She is far away and out of his life, and I am here.

More than anything, I’m scared that these irrationalities are going to lead me to cause the destruction I’m so afraid of. He had absolutely no reason to know why I was upset. It’s not like he said he went to the zoo with the Other One; for all I know, he went there on his own, or with his sister, or whatever. He doesn’t bring her up. Ever. She remains, however, the star of my own dramatically envisioned drop into relationship despair, and this is not good.

I’m sitting here scared he doesn’t love me, but he does; if I keep doubting it, I may give myself something to really be teary-eyed about. That would be the worst thing I could possibly imagine. I don’t need to plague myself with What Could Have Been, on top of all else.

Arrg. I swear, I just need to get out of my own head, but I’m swimming for the exit and I can’t find the out. My imagination? It creates a cruel, cruel landscape sometimes. I don’t know how I fell so far from the doily approach to love, but I’ve got to find my way back. And soon.

I’m more judgmental than I like to admit.  It’s one of those uglies I like to gloss over with a sweet smile, a pleasant outlook, an accept-all projection to the world.  It’s not true. 

Judgmentalism, which spell-check is rejecting as an English word, isn’t quite the same as haughtiness or snobbery, at least not in my experience.  I’m still really really nice to most everyone I meet.  Somewhere inside me, though, I’m comparing myself.  I’m assessing how I stack up, and I’m making a snap judgment.  I don’t even know who you are, but your hair, your clothes, your shoes: I’ve already decided that I’m better.  Better.  Whatever does this mean? And what is my scale? I really hate that I do this.   Sure as this goes the other way; I decide you’re better, I can’t stand so close to you, I may as well walk around with a bag over my head.  That’s normal.  It’s the “I’m too good for you” mental tally I’ve been noticing scrawled about in the rooms of my mind that’s really got me reeling this time.  It’s alarming.

On paper, you’d expect this more of J.  He’s one of those stereotypical moneyed, privileged New Yorkers; hard nosed more than you’d like with an impressive resume including boarding schools, the ivy league, and sweater vests.

I won’t say that he’s an amazing all-accepting demi-god (though I’d like to); he has his flaws, but he seems to see the person through the exterior really much better than me, and I’m trying to take a lesson.

J, I still think most unfortunately, is enamored with bluegrass music.  I dislike bluegrass.  In fact, I’ve been known on more than one occasion to profess undying hatred for it.  It’s a constant bargaining chip: I’ll pick up the check, but no banjo music till March; that kind of thing.

We went to a bluegrass-y “concert” at a community center in middle-of-Virginia-nowheresville over the weekend, and the minute we walked in the door, I felt like I didn’t belong.  Truth be told, I felt superior.  Here were some bona fide misfits: hippy-style crochet clothes; big skits and clog-shoes; argyle knee socks with woefully clashing peacoats. Women with unkempt hair and no makeup.  Scraggly beards and cowboy boots; oversized and un-tucked flannel shirts.

J has a sort of business connection with the fiddle player; we watched the whole show and, it turned out, were obligated to hang out afterwards.  I had a flask in my purse in express preparation for this contingency.  [Aside: Magda! What! The! Hell!].  It’s fair to note here, I think, that the main attraction legitimately reminded me of a serial killer.  He had a frantic look in his eyes; a really receding hairline, but a long ponytail and a somewhat unruly beard.  I figured, hey, if I’m going to go out, I’m going out with a smile and a sizzle.

The after party, which J informs me is properly called a “jam session,” was in a warehouse not far from the studio; we walked up and I was like, this is it, I’m toast, there’s definitely some kind of ritual death going on in there. There I go again, see; assuming my demise is on the line just based on what this guy looked like.

I breathed a big sigh of relief when we were greeted with no candles, no blood, no torture devices.  It was just a bunch of people sitting around on old couches.  There were snacks and good conversation; people were talking and people were, well, jamming.

He surprised me, the serial killer mandolin man.  I can’t conjure a sudden love of his music, but I did appreciate it.  He was very, very skilled.  And afterwards, he talked to me.  And he was nice.

The serial killer introduced himself to me, and he got me a beer.  He didn’t know a damn thing about me, and he probably saw how much one of these things is not like the other just as much as I felt it.  Here’s a man who’s enormously talented, and he’s accepting me.  I should be able to return the favor, yes?

He sat back down with his fellow followers after that; the argyle girl, the hippie earth women, the guys in their flannel; they were just there, being marvelous, being themselves, and truly producing art.  They were to their instruments what I am to my laptop.  I actually—and this is a little bit alarming—I actually found myself wanting to be one of them.  Really.  They were all just such great friends, such great artists, such great people.  They were like a fun club that I’d dissed, but now wanted to join because it was just so cool.

I was impressed, and mighty ashamed of myself.  There’s always so much more going on in life than can be ascertained through the filter of our own experiences, our own prejudices, though; I’m chalking this up to a learning experience. And I do hope to have many more. 

I work for a weekly publication that arrives in the inboxes of the elite (aka, our blessed subscribers) each and every Wednesday morning. Tuesdays thus are reserved for assembling the issue and, ultimately, releasing it: this latter bit falls to me. Ta da! I’m imagining a light beaming down on me, there’s wild applause, and I’m doing a little curtsy. But I’m getting beside myself.

We publish in-house, in what I have always suspected is an industrial revolution-era workshop somewhere in the basement, where there are heavy metal printing presses, men in ink-stained aprons, and loud clanking noises that permeate the day and night. We send them our proofs before checking out at 5.30, then they stay up all night arranging the little letters on the plates and running them off, manually. Despite these somewhat throw-back conditions, these printing-men appreciate an e-mail letting them know your pages are on the way. I’ve still not figured how this fits into my mindscape, but I’m working on it.

January 23 was our release day (obviously, you say; let’s get to the point!). I wrote the same in my e-mail, but I caught myself just staring at it. January 23, January 23, hmmm, there’s something that looks really familiar about that.

Dad’s birthday.

Today is my dad’s birthday, and I only remembered with about six hours to spare. Shame! On! Me! I actually bought a card a few weeks back, but some sort of disconnect since then has left it to languish in my desk drawer.

My dad, my hero, the man with the plan and He Who Does All Most Excellently. I never, ever forget a sister’s birthday, or my mom’s birthday, or even an aunt’s birthday. What’s up with me, seriously?

I think karma must owe me one, because my parents are up in their mountain house this week. This means that he’ll get my card along with all the others when he returns back home. Unless he notices that the card was postmarked, um, today, he’ll never know. Thanks for that one (upward nod). I’ve e-mailed, and will call, so all seems smooth.

But still. I’ve got to get my act together! I’ve got to make paying attention, living not so much inside myself, more of a priority. Aarg. I really am such a piece of work sometimes; it’s a bit amazing that a man as clever and put together as my dad is so much a part of me.

I’m feeling a little bit like a whore. I just thought I’d throw that out there.

J and I had dinner plans with some friends of ours in the city last night, which meant I missed my Catholic women’s group. Again. In fact, I haven’t gone since I last wrote about it here.  I sent a sad-style regret e-mail; sorry, can’t come, it’s restaurant week and I’m out with my heathen friends, see ya ’round.

Dinner ran long and I stayed with J, which in truth was the plan all along. That plan hit a sharp corner upon seeing uber-Catholic girl on the train this morning, however, while I was riding in precisely the opposite direction I should have been had I been coming from home.

There are lots of good answers to the question “why are you coming south this morning?” None of them include “because I stayed the night with J.” Let’s see … I had an early meeting. I got sidetracked and forgot to get off, so had to turn around. I moved. I got a new job. LOTS OF OPTIONS, magda. But no. In a moment of extreme caffeine deprived non-creativity, I just told her straight. Immediately I wished I was in the movies, and could just freeze the frame and say “or…not,” then do a re-take.

I got off at the next stop, after she told me she was “so, so sad” for me. Wrath, shock, and anger I would have been fine with. Pity, well, I’m not so sure.

About an hour later, she sent me an invite to come hear a speaker who (by cruel coincidence) is speaking oh-so-conveniently this next Monday. The talk? “The thrill of the chaste: finding fulfillment while keeping your clothes on!” Holy hell! I can’t go. I just can’t; I wouldn’t be able to take it.

When I think back on my conservative and well-churched upbringing, I’m a bit depressed looking at my life today, the choices I’ve made. (But as a brief parenthetical in my defense: I’ve always been completely monogamous. Always. And sex is not something I take lightly). My mom still thinks I’m a virgin; my sister and her husband both were when they got married. That’s how we were taught, what was presented as “right.” I think there’s a lot of validity to abstinence until “the one,” and I know plenty of people who really have felt it fulfilling to wait until marriage. I don’t condemn it, it just isn’t—and hasn’t been—for me. I don’t think that the way I live now is wrong, but I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t ever give me a moment’s pause.

This, my friends, is where “magda” was born. My real name? Not so much. But oh, so appropriate. Catholic school taught me well (in some things more than others, clearly, but moving on…) The biblical Magda—Mary Magdalene—was a whore. A bona fide prostitute, and she was great. Kind of a whore, but great. And Jesus loved her anyway.

Of course she changed after a time, and left her whoredom behind her; but she did it because she wanted to, because she found something better, because she felt she could—not because someone told her she had to. There really is a difference.

As magda I do my own thing; I write on unlined paper in spaces lacking definite parameters. I do it to chart myself, and to check myself; I look at where I’ve been, and decide if it’s where I want to keep going. If not? Then I’ll change, and it will be marvelous and well planned. So I may be a bit of Magdalene. I suspect, however, that everything is going to work out in the end.