No traffic on the freeway yesterday and yet there was coo-koo-loo crazy traffic on Rodeo Drive. I was sure Angelina or somebody huge was shopping at Chanel to cause such a riot of pedestrians to take to the street and snap photos of some unidentified A-list object—but there was no one. There were just LOADS of tourists, many who looked as if they had just fallen off the turnip truck, all taking pictures of the street. I tend to get somewhat irritated by tourists taking pictures of this street and yet I know I have done the very same thing on the Avenue Montaigne.
I got to Igor’s office a half an hour early and because of my broken toe and the HUGE influx of tourists I couldn’t walk around BH like I usually do when I get there early. I instead called a friend on the phone and we talked as I sat on the planter in front of Igor’s building, a planter that would comfortably house a size zero derriere and uncomfortably hold my size 12 tushy. As I sat there talking I saw a cat walk of curiosities that would have all gotten the Sartorialist’s attention and most certainly made it to the pages of his blog. I felt like a curbside Anna Wintour at a fashion show, peering behind my enormous glasses trying to determine if a given ensemble worked or not as my friend and I discussed the merits of MAC’s Spice lip pencil and just how many hours of sleep each of us managed to get. My friend was in the middle of telling me a story about a Youtube makeup artist who dances as he applies makeup when I saw a homeless man dragging a piece of luggage with a cardboard sign that he had made that he affixed to his portable closet. The sign read, “Screen Actors Guild Lies. I knew Frank Sinatra. I produced 40 films. I am a retired veteran.” I so wanted to take a picture to show you but that would have meant I would have had to get off the phone with my friend. I instead told my friend what I saw. I hope that she will comment here and verify the veracity of my vagrant sighting.
I left the curbside catwalk and my friend at 11:58. I only had two minutes to get to Igor’s office. In normal circumstances that would be plenty of time however the broken toe slows me down. I got to Igor’s waiting room by 12:02 and I stood waiting. If I had sat he would have just come out and got me and then I would have just had to get up again. It seemed a better plan to just stand and wait.
When Igor opened the door he asked me “Did you just get here?” I think my standing position threw him, but I wasn’t sure what he meant. I went all Bill Clinton on him and asked what he meant by “here”. When he explained that he meant his office I affirmed that yes, I had just arrived. When I sat I thought of you and my post from yesterday and how I had nothing to say. As anticipated I complained about my toe and my eye and we spent some time, too much if you ask me, in which I explained the boring story of why I have lashes that grow down into my eye ( I was in a car accident when I was 17 in which I put my face through a windshield of a AMC Pacer) and how the lashes scratch up my cornea and why the opthamologist wants me to have surgery to remove the offending lashes. All of that took a good 15 minutes.
Then Igor asked me if I had heard anything about the book ( he knows that “Thursdays with Igor” is currently being reviewed by an agent) and I told him if I had that he would have been the third person to know. Then I started to winge a bit about how much I want to sell the book and how much selling the book would mean to me. He asked me why I want it so much. I instantly bristled. I started to defend myself. “I want it because I want it. Isn’t that enough?” I didn’t like the answer so I gave him another version, ”No, I want it because I want something I create to be born. I want to publish because it would give me a sense of legitimacy.”
“Legitimacy?”
“Yeah…my parents weren’t married until a year after I was born and I didn’t know about that until I was 27. They were really ashamed of that and they hid it from me. When they found out that I knew about it they lied to me, even when it was clear that I had evidence. When I asked my mother for a copy of their marriage certificate she whited out the year they were married with Liquid Paper and she wrote in the year before my birth before she gave it to me. Their shame about my illegitimacy had to play a part of my obsession with legitimacy.”
“Can the book being published give you that?” Igor asked as if he knew the answer.
“Maybe. I also think that it has something to do with my father. My father wanted to be a writer. And he never wrote anything. And I have…and in publishing a book I would triumph him. I would do what he couldn’t. I felt that when I got the job at the paper and I had my own column. That happened the week before he died and him knowing that helped me somehow. I think that publishing book will help further.”
“I can see that.” Igor paused and put his hand to his brow and did his ‘Igor thinking deeply’ posture. “But isn’t it enough that you get feedback on your blog that you are a good writer. Isn’t it enough that I tell you that you are a good writer?”
‘Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely grateful to my readers. I am beyond grateful that anyone wants to read what I write. I am truly amazed that I have an audience. And, yes, it means a lot to me that you think I am a good writer. But I guess what I am seeking in terms of being signed by an agent and having a publisher buy the book is something that will deal with the my father complex. I think that all of the praise, feedback and encouragement I get through you or the blog is relational and hence maternal and that maternal need is met. Being signed by an agent and having my book bought would be masculine and objective and would be a real hit to my father complex.”
“So the masculine is distant and removed and objective? The feminine is relational and more subjective? ”
“Well that’s how it feels to me,” I explained. Even as I was saying it I felt as if I was discovering these truths as the words emerged from my mouth.
“It is like your father is like an archetype. You are wanting to experience that archetype through publishing.”
“My father was Zeus. He was distant and constantly screwing around with woman he considered to be beneath him…mere mortals. Only he never became a swan.”
“What?” Igor asked.
“He didn’t take the form of a swan in order to seduce them.” I quickly gave Igor a refresher course on Greek mythology.
“Let me give you a hypothetical” Igor interjected ”let’s say someone you were working with, some masculine authority that you respected, told you that he saw certain talents and abilities in you. Would hearing that feel masculine or feminine?”
“Both. It would be masculine because he is an authority. It would feel feminine because it would come out of the context of a relationship.”
“So what started out as objective and masculine could become feminine and relational over time?”, he asked trying to get the gist of my internal rules.
“Yes. Sure.”
“So the publisher could start as masculine and as you get to know them and have a relationship with the people at the publishing house it could switch over to feeling feminine?”
“Right. Yes. But that doesn’t mean that having the experience of having an objective masculine approve of me wouldn’t be healing. It has been healing to have you approve of me.” I said that last bit without looking at him. I talked to some distant listener.
“And over time I feel like our work together has helped to fill that hole of longing for approval from “the father”. Because of our work I can now trust the acceptance that comes from the feminine. When you say something complimentary about me I can now believe you. I no longer devalue someone for saying something nice about me or just chalk up their positive feelings as their just being nice because they like me. That is a big change for me.”
The hour passed quickly. I left Igor’s feeling that maybe I had been wrong about August. Oh, and just in case you read my last post, it was cool enough yesterday in Beverly Hills to wear a cardigan.
I imagine Igor looks forward to Thursdays more than you, he gets to debate, as well as help.
I love the way you think and analyse things.
I love the blogger mentality that we all share… the fact you know, we would all have loved to see that man with the sign and wanted to photograph him. To bring awareness to his cause but also as it was something interesting to share, yet your humanity to your friend is still there and you continued your conversation with a real person.
Another wonderful post xx
Really? You think? I hope so. I hope he gets as much out of work together as I do. I know I get a TON out of my work with my clients.
Thank you so much for your compliment. I am taking that in.:-)
It is lovely how being a blogger/writer makes all the events of ordinary life seem rife with creative potential.
Thanks so much, Ruth!xo
Such an interesting post…it got me thinking about my own story in so many ways…hmmm…I’ll give everything a deeper thought before commenting further!
Thanks for your comment. I look forward to hearing what this brings up for you.
This makes me realize how little I think about what I want from being recognized as writer (and I have my own thing going on with legitimacy, multilayered and deep). It has to be challenging and interesting and surprising to have these discussions with Igor, where you get to examine your presuppositions in an attempt to understand what’s really going on.
With every desire ( except the basic ones) there is a likely some psychological motive and that isn’t a bad thing. It can be helpful to know what we are trying to get out of a given goal that way we can test if it is what we really want. My Thursdays with Igor have made my life so much richer. I am so grateful to have him.
This is a really interesting post and it is making me think, which is always good. But I am also frazzled today and need to come back and reread evertyhing. So I’m just saying I was here and I’ll be back.
Happy you are now and that you will be back later.:-)
I have similar feelings about outside approval, but hadn’t thought of them in terms of masculine/feminine. How fascinating.
Erich Fromm writes a lot about the different needs that we get through maternal and paternal love and how and why these kind of loves are and should be different. It is very interesting. I may need to reread him as it relates to this topic.
You’ve got to stop with the deep thinking posts. Can’t you simply put up goofy pictures accompanied by funny captions?
I’m thinking there’s variations on this theme of masculine (or feminine in many cases, too) approval when it comes to a desire to have something published. We all need that approval to some degree, and here’s one way to achieve it. Perhaps with the blog, since it’s ephemeral – yes, the internets remembers all, but it’s not tactile like a physical book – any approval will feel fleeting.
Even though the author doesn’t physically make the book, there’s still a ritual, a Promethean, creative act, that does, and the author is a link in that chain. And given your broken toe status, you could certainly be seen also as Hephaestus. You’ve got this knowledge that you’ve stolen from your mind and are going to disperse it, it merely needs to be fashioned into something. Now, the question is, do you limp?
Sorry. Cardigan or no, August still sucks.
Are you kidding me? Some of your posts are sooooo deep I feel like I need a digging permit and a hard hat!;-)
I do think that you are so right about the ephemeral nature of the blog. I also think that there is something about getting paid for one’s work that legitimizes.
Yep, this Hephaestus has a mythic limp.;-)
And i totally agree about August. I hate summer and there is no psychological meaning behind that—objectively summer SUCKS!;-)
What do we writers think we have to prove, anyway?
Interesting thoughts about masculinity/femininity here, too…
Stirring the brain today, my dear.
Doesn’t everybody think they have something to prove?;-)
Happy to do some brain stirring!!
Oh and I am quite familiar with this. I think in part you come up with new insights when you surprise yourself and sneak up on them:).
I knew I was tempting insight when I said I didn’t think I ‘d have one.;-)
i’m the friend who recommended the dancing youtube man. and i can attest to the fact that ms. balette claimed to have nothing to talk about before her visit to igor. somehow i sensed that day that that wouldn’t be the case. ms. balette is not a person to ever have nothing interesting to talk about. and besides the fact that i showed up in this, i love this post.
Hey, gorgeous, you didn’t tell them that I REALLY saw that guy. Thank you for your kind comment and for keeping me company pre-Igor.xo
I can’t imagine anybody not wanting to publish your book. Fingers crossed that agent sees the light in your writing.
xo
I hope the agent reads your comment and agrees with you.:-)
Outstanding…I had to do a big smile when I read your comment about the weather yesterday : )
It sounds like Igor is getting quite a work out, I bet none of his clients are this intelligent! I agree with you about the male/female tendencies. I know your book will be useful and at the same time entertaining to its readers…Have a great weekend LBR!xoxoxo
PS- someone else I knew had the same eyelash problem and surgery fixed it beautifully
The weather wasn’t so bad and the session was better than I thought. It takes a big person to admit that they were wrong.;-)
Hope you have a gorgeous weekend.
p.s. Thank you for telling me that. That is a GREAT comfort to hear.
My LBR,
In your sharing, I see myself. I attach so much meaning to “publishing,” for good, deep, psychological reasons.
So “something” seemed to have happened at Igor’s afterall? I suspected.
August still stinks out here. It’s the harbinger of fall which heralds in Go-awful winter.
xo
Yeah, a lot happened there. And I was happy that I could share with you some of what Igor said( in our chat) and that it was helpful. If Igor knew all the people he was helping he would be charging me more.;-)
xo
No offense to Igor, because I vicariously adore him, but really? Isn’t it enough to set the goal and work toward achieving it? Now it’s necessary to explore why THAT goal?
I’m kidding, of course. Mostly.
YOu don’t need to explore your goal. I will do it for both if us.;-)
Wonderful post, and a major coincidence for me, as I’ve been talking with my children about what motivates people to write memoir. What is the goal, what is validated? Yesterday my son and I were discussing this again and we ended up talking about parental approval and how we seek it all our lives. Lots of great food for thought.
Thank you, Susan. I have to say that I don’t know if I write memoir for legitimacy. I think I want to publish for legitimacy. I think that I write memoir for different reasons. I think you have inspired another post! Thank you!!!
I love hearing about yours and Igor’s back-and-forth. It makes me smile because you are both witty and quick.
Thank you, Amy!! So glad you enjoy. I do think I write myself to sound wittier and quicker than I actually am.;-)
I was going to tell you that a lot of times when I thought I had nothing to say, I would leave amazed at what had transpired. I also now know why we called those cars Pissers instead of Pacers. I get you wanting to be published and that type of approval. I could also give you another parallel in our lives but I won’t and you can use your imagination relating to your post today. Have you gotten the manicure yet? I promise you will be amazed. I am glad it is cooler there because it isn’t here!
I am guessing I know which parallel we have. I won’t say it. Just that neither of us are saying it makes me pretty sure what you are talking about. We do have a lot in common.
I did get an ordinary manicure today. But my next manicure will be the one you recommend. I can’t wait to try it.
All I can think of is what an awesome detail that Liquid Paper story is for your book.
It is a nice detail. Isn’t it? My mother has no future in forging documents.
Amen for cool August days! And I am fascinated by the idea that, for you, the masculine is objective and archetypal, while the feminine is relational.
My experience of “the feminine” is very different. For me, the feminine is the purest form of everything. I shouldn’t admit it, but I’m actually sexist. I think that, fundamentally, women control everything – everything important, anyway.
The whole part about your mother and the marriage licence is outrageous! What amazes me is that she’d think you were stupid enough to fall for it
Legitimacy is all about your internal experience of belonging.
When I read this post, I thought about how much your quest for Lake Bluff and babies and ranch homes is also about an archetypal vision of belonging.
August is turning out to be a good month!
(I find, it’s always better to live through the crap months of the year, than to speculate on them. They go faster that way.)
I have to say as a woman with a major father complex and who long idealized the masculine over the feminine, I LOVE your open preference for the feminine. For many years I didn’t appreciate the feminine( in terms of its archetypal energies) and I worshiped at that the alter of the masculine. I have come a long way and I most definitely appreciate the feminine.
Isn’t it extraordinary that she thought her forged document could fool me? ANd you got it sooooooo right, my longing for home is about longing for legitimacy and belonging.
August is good internally. Externally it is still not my favorite month.
Great post! – I just know that your book is going to be a success and can’t wait for it to be published … May the writing Gods be with you…
I loved your observation of creating a book as creating something – for me that is what drives me too! ..XO HHL
Thank you for your very lovely wishes. I hope the writing gods are as kinds as you.
Definitely writing a book is a birth and it is a birth I am ready for!xo
legitimacy – it is interesting…i can’t decide if my issues with it are similar to your own, or different. i can’t decide if one can get a sense of legitimacy from an exterior source, or if it has to come from within. i don’t know which is scarier.
I think that legitimacy can come from within and/or from without and I believe that both ways are legitimate. There tends to be a ‘it should come from within’ zeitgeist going at present. I think that we are a creatures who get a lot of our emotional needs met by others and so it make sense that people and institutions and rituals( graduation, jobs, etc.) would serve to legitimize.
funny, i never did go to my college graduation. but i do think that my (now) built-in value came from an external source. or plenty of it did anyway.
i think both external and internal are legitimate, absolutely, but i wonder if external satisfies sufficiently.
you’ll let me know after your book is a best seller.
I think that external is needed for the ability to create the internal. I may be wrong about this–but that is my sense of things. I think one has to have had the experience of it so one can recreate it for oneself. Jung would disagree with me. Freud and post-Freudians would likely agree with me.
And, yes, I will definitely let you know about how delightfully satisfying and validating it is to have a best seller( I am laughing out loud as I type this;-).
I need to go back and read your August post. I have been completely absent from blogging and reading lately, and now I am back I cannot at all fathom why because I enjoyed reading this post so much. In a way I am sort of pleased I have a few of your lengthy posts to enjoy stacked up! I’ve also been having a bad feeling about August. Maybe it is full of better things than we expected.
Anyway, I loved in this post how you talk with Igor. The terms you use, the way you analyse things, it reads for me like a scholarly discussion where you are several IQ levels above Igor and a million levels above the rest of the population. Your therapist discussions are aspirational! xx
I am so happy to see you. I have missed you and was just wondering about you the other day. I know that you don’t always enjoy a longer post so i am extremely honoured that you are pleased to have a few lengthy posts of mine to read. Thank you!
Your compliment has this weasel blushing. Thank you so much, Pretty Face. I am extremely grateful to you for your very generous feedback.
xo
>“So the masculine is distant and removed and objective? The feminine is relational and more subjective? ”
If you hear a bell ringing in the far off distance, it’s probably the one in my head.
Having felt more than a little Albert Brooksian in “Defending My Life” lately, this notion of legitimacy is so helpful; thanks for the intriguing post!
LOVE you!!! LOL! I can hear the bell ringing from here.
And, I must tell you, i adore Albert Brooks in “Defending Your Life”. That is such a great movie. I am happy if this post was helpful in anyway.
for some reason, reading igor’s responses to you made me feel very glad i am still without a therapist because she is still on sabbatical a year and a half later…. maybe it’s me but don’t miss it one bit.
darling, thank you too for coming by my little blog and cheering me on, it means the world to me.
xxoo
I am happy you are enjoying your sabbatical. And I am happier still that I have cheered you up.xo
Your Thursdays with Igor are sounding much like conversations between good friends these days.
That is really interesting feedback. I do think Igor gives me space to be my own authority in the sessions and that is a wonderful thing.
Nothing like therapy for a therapist!
Nothing like a comment from you( only in the future could you not be so wordy;-) Love you!:-)
I love this post, LBR – very deep and thoughtful and insightful. I am keeping my fingers crossed that you hear wonderful news about your book very soon. And I hope your toe is feeling better!
hello again,
it was you and the white haired lady that steered me…thank you for directing us to Mary L. Tabor’s blog. -like meeting someone exciting and you want to know more about that person’s life.perhaps because you recognize something of yourself, you need to know more..to feel , it is just fine!
hugs Col
So happy to connect you with Mary. She is lovely and a wonderful spirit. I so look forward to reading her book.