HARASSMENT

It’s been a long time since I’ve written. About three weeks. My life Is changing shape for the first time in seven years and I am not so often in our weekly groups, working on other projects, some that bring in some direct income, some that promise to.

Yesterday I had to thumb through all the stories I have posted on-line. Not the guru book, but my other blog. I had to go through those stories, ferreting out a small flood of vile comments that landed there, sprinkled amongst the different stories.

I saw all these pages of stories. It made me a little sad for a moment. Like, oh no, my writing life is over. I felt how precious all that writing is. And it’s always different to look backwards and marvel at all the writing that managed to make it through, and to look forward into emptiness. Will there really be more writing? How will I write if I get the full-time job I interviewed for last Wednesday, dressed in that super-sharp navy linen suit that I’d found for $10 at Woodstock’s consignment shop. Even my friend who met me right afterwards for a walk in the public gardens expressed a little surprise when she first saw me. I think I definitely looked like someone who wanted that job.

I do want it, but it feels very strange – strange and exciting – to be possibly on the brink of a full-time job again. I have images in my head of actually worrying about other people’s projects – or, not worrying about them, but suddenly my head being filled with other people’s endeavors instead of my own. I sort of feel like I will be an actor. I will go step into someone else’s play, but it actually feels like a role I’d like. I cold get into it.

They haven’t offered it to me yet, but at the beginning of the interview the woman was saying that she’d be inviting some people back for a second interview, and by the end of my interview she was saying she’d like me to come back. But I haven’t even gotten that call yet. I hope I get it on Monday.

When I spoke to my mother on the phone I told her I was having this interview. I knew she’d be happy that I was doing something as ordinary as looking for a job. In fact, she suggested I could go to Kingston to the unemployment office and check the listings there. She suggested this several times. I said I would. I am polite with my mother, and sometimes genuinely warm. But not so much the last time we spoke.

Somebody had printed out for her a couple of stories from my blog, stories that had to do with my growing up, the family. This person who is supposed to be my mother’s friend and who I once – about twenty years ago – thought of as my friend – printed out these stories and brought them over for my mother to read.

She read them and then wrote to me because she thought I had misunderstood a letter that my aunt had written to me. And she said on the phone, “And you wrote something about how it had been with me and your father and I thought when I read it – wow, that’s so sketchy. I could write much more about that! But then I thought, well, if that’s how you saw it, that’s fine.”

“You should write about it, Mum, that would be great!” I said.

“Well, if I did I wouldn’t publicize it,” my mother said. “Because it’s so, you know, personal.”

“Well, that what I like to write about,” I said, and I think we left it at that.

Except that she also asked at one point. “Weren’t you scared when the ashram said they’d sue you?”

“No,” I said.

I told her about the interview, but I didn’t tell her where and I had a fib lined up if she asked.

My mother has her feet in both camps. Many of her friends are ashram devotees. If my mother knew where I was trying to get a job it might leak to one of the fundamentalists who is trying to do me in and I can see phone calls being made. “Don’t hire her. She’s not what she appears to be.”

After the rain of nasty, distorted emails I’ve been getting from people who do not identify themselves, I am cautious. After noticing that someone is methodically removing our brochures from the local health food store, I am careful.