I have not been writing very consistently since I started. This is largely because I publish “personal” accounts only; I need some money to publish publicly. So it is that I plan to get a debit card on Wednesday so that I can 1) pay a doctor bill; 2) pay for an ad with Hadassah; 3) pay for publicly publishing WordPress.com. I hope to have some money left over to go to the bookstore with my friend Cynthia. However, looking over my bills and such, I had better not spend too much money at the bookstore… some of what I shall buy I shall buy in September. What I believe I shall buy is Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories and Cinderella Tales from Around the World by Heidi Anne Heiner. Angela Carter, I admit, is a bit on the dark side. While alive she was friends with Salmon Rushdie. It takes a lot in a writer for me to put up with views as anti-religion as hers. Yet the folkloric style of her work fascinates me. I guess you could call her work “dark fantasy.” As for Cinderella Tales from Around the World, I honestly believe there is no dark side here: I simply love folktales, and the history of Cinderella (beginning in Africa and ending in both Europe and China) is fascinating in and of itself.
However, there is more important news: on Tuesday I am going to Kansas City to talk to a surgeon. I have a precancerous cyst on my liver. I have been told that I shall not need surgery for fifteen years–and yet I am going to speak to a surgeon. I have also been told that we should delay surgery as long as possible, as surgery in and of itself can create cancer in my liver. Yet I am not as worried as I could be.
I believe that no matter what, God will be with me. If I need to have the surgery, God will watch over me, and even (though it is unlikely) if I die, I know God will be on the other side, waiting for me. There are projects I wish I was finished with, but I put all that in God’s hands, because some of what I wanted to do with my life is already done. Not everybody can say that. So many people put off what they want their lives to be about until later only for it never to get done. Me, I have a four-book set, The Bible According to Eve; Discovering Wonderland; and other novels (Faust in Love and Brazil) written. I also have books of short stories partially written (Poor Folk and Maybe the Meek Shall Inherit the Earth, the only two finished; Fraud on the Fairies; This Land is My Land; and Lost Tales). True, only the first book of The Bible According to Eve has been published… but I can hope beyond hope that the rest of the set shall be published, and that at some point they shall sell. As for Discovering Wonderland it was the beginning of a set of books in which I tried to write about my unhappy relationship with my father; Brazil is a rewrite of a Talmudic story set in a third-world country; and Faust in Love is an anti-Trump spoof… I hope it is not too late to do any good… I wrote it in his first year as president.
Anyone reading this–if there is anyone–keep me in your prayers. Both for when I see the surgeon (whether I need surgery or not) and after seeing him (the work I long to finish on my writing). I still hope to finish Oz Revisited and, about my Grandma, A History of Frances Westin Williams.