The Wastepaper Basket

A throwback piece, March 22nd, 2025

Pope Francis died yesterday- my mother comes in from work and the world, and I’m knee-deep in a screenplay that has taken me three months to beat down. I finished the script this morning, where’s it’s going to sit in my computer gathering binary dust as I move onto another project, as far from this one as I can possibly come up with. I realize that I’ve never actually done a second draft of a screenplay- lots and lots of embryos of ideas that I’ve been too tired to even begin to try and nurture further than a single draft. But I’m doing better. I actually treat it like work now, like it means something.

“Un papa grasso segue un papa magro-” a fat pope follows a thin one.

People smarter than I are telling this to me through the internet. I haven’t even thought to ask my catholic friends how they feel- as an infant anglican, a denominational mutt, I’m not sure what the catholic sentiment should be when a pope is lost. But I’m learning lots of things now- I’ve been re-reading Anthony Doer’s novel, Four Seasons In Rome, a book that’s made me both hope and despair about my own artistic vision, skill, and future. In 2005 Anthony Doer, a midwestern writer and father of newborn twins, was given a scholarship, a stipend and year-long living in Rome. The real rome, italy- I’ve read this book once, absolutely devoured it is more like it. I turned to it again a week or two ago when I felt that my images, and the vocabulary I used for them , felt a little dry. Now that Pope Francis has passed, the book speaks out from a time warp- Doer talks about the surreal, slightly disconnected feelings of being a non-catholic, non italian living in rome during the death of Pope John Paul 2nd.

Trump taking office is already old news, but the shockwaves are still reaching out. I think about fat popes, thin popes, red faced businessmen. I was worried, during my time in the UK, that I would be the blundering, foot-in-mouth American than all American tourists both fear to become and seem to be powerless to prevent. But my presence quickly gained more and more interest as the US election came closer and closer. I would pass the breakfast table and see cartoons of the soon-to-be second time president of the united states- and then realize that they weren’t cartoons, but photographs. Soon it became the only thing anyone would talk about after I opened my mouth. I thought it was going to be difficult, me, with my fence-straddling politics, and the crowd of well-educated, middle aged upper class english people. It proved to be a breeze once I realized that my presence was only needed as a conversation starter, and that my own opinions, feelings, sentences were completely brushed aside. I would be asked things like “how do you feel,” or “what do your parents think,” and before I could get halfway through, “Glad to be here and not there,” or “Nobody likes the choices we were given,” or anything at all, I would be interrupted and a new point would be brought up, developed, and I would be sitting on the shelf for everyone to point at. Sometimes I think that we see wounds and aggregates for our insecurities wherever we can find them, and other times I really believe that God, fate, and irony really do blend in to form cosmic lemon juice for our own personal cosmic psychological paper cuts.

I wonder why I can’t write my novel like this? When I write essays, diary entries, blog posts, or whatever dated pseudo-intellectual pieces that I put here, they come so much easier. I can’t pump one of these out on everyday- like my novels, it would be a spiritual migraine to force myself to sit at the computer and write on a subject that hasn’t been blessed by my muse. Stephen King describes some efforts of writing to feel like “shoveling shit from the sitting position.” I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to read a word of Stephen King- in May I go to Maine, and I’m going to try and see if I can go to Bangor and run into some of his landmarks. It’s entirely laughable that I have had a history of artistic hubris, with absolutely no receipts to justify it. But after two years of being a dropout, I’m finally, just now, beginning to shed the constricting layers of snakeskin that have stopped me from being the writer I want to be; the person I want to be.

What everyone says is true is true: you need to be reading to be writing. Finally, I’ve been taken down enough pegs that I find i can stomach sitting through courses, books, essays on the art of writing. This is how “On Writing” finally made it to my good reads account- I’m going through Masterclass, specifically Aaron Sorkin- next is going to have to be Aristotle’s Poetics, which is going to be a migraine that I’ll just have to get over.

It turns out that sometimes when you do things you hate, you actually get things from it. Who knew? Also, when you discipline yourself, one day you can wake up and want to do the work, not just lust after the result? Fascinating.

So many dry spells- sometimes it feels like my life has been one long, tired march of skinny popes. Spiritual discipline to the point of self-abuse- self-sacrifice to the same end. You can only boil an empty pot for so long- I still worry that I’m working myself to the edge of a cliff, but it’s this same worry that’s kept me from doing so many things.

I have myself to thank for reading, writing- I finished the screenplay. I’ve read about five books this year, which is three more than last year. (I’m as ashamed as you are- remember what we used to be?) I’ve watched 28 GOOD films this year for the first time- I’m almost 70 days into my welsh learning, the longest streak I’ve ever had. I’m listening to podcasts again- when this piece is over I think I’ll take a walk. Are you impressed? I hope you are, because that’s been one of the only things that I’ve fed TOO much- there’s a million suspects, but the fact is that I crave praise more than ever. I’ve quieted down that self critic, thank goodness, she’s been back down into her seat for a few months now. But I still do all of this, the writing, the learning, the reading, as if I’m saving up points to be graded at the end of the semester. 

My mother doesn’t praise me the way she used to- this might be my fault. If I try and think back far enough, I’m not sure there really was a ‘golden era’ for her appreciation- not that I feel that she’s given the opposite effect. She’s not made it clear that she’s ashamed of me- but she’s stopped making clear what she thinks at all. I’ve known for a long time that no matter what I do, she’ll worry- if i do everything that could have wanted, re-take the ACT’s for a better grade, go to a private christian college, go to church camp, participate in 4-H, get a summer job, volunteer, dress neat, smile wide- then what I’m left with is a miserable and fake me. And of course my mother is way too smart, full to the brim of genuine love to ignore my authentic, though masked, misery. On the other hand, when I take the steps to chisel out that genuine self, when I go through the messy but rewarding process of living a fulfilling life, she does little to mask her panic. Panic, and worse, the mistrust of my decisions. There’s love there, but love can’t rewrite hundreds of years of genetic code, a genetic code that lives and breathes in the universe of anxiety. I still have a naive sense that if I try hard enough, I can stop the worry, like the little dutch boy stopping the destruction of a city by stuffing his thumb into the hole of a leaking dam. I’m growing out of it; growing up, and realizing that there is no dam keeping this anxiety at bay. We’re neck deep in a raging river of ever-reaching anxiousness. As a new adult, my only job is to keep sailing as these waves pass under me, and stop the water from getting in my boat.

Strangely enough, I’m making her very happy now- maybe that’s why it’s been bothering me that the affection has seemed so lackluster. She’s relieved that I’m self educating, something I swore I would do, but lost in the all-encompassing quicksand of self doubt and depression. My hair is now a natural color, which makes her relax. In my mother’s world, pink hair will attract the “wrong sort of men,” if any at all. She likes that I’m sandy colored now, and is resigned to the fact that the pink hair will return. I follow her advice on skincare, I’m eating better than ever, and biggest victory of all… I’m going back to school. I actually have to credit this to Mr. Stephen King again- after reading how he laid out the compatibility of being a teacher and a writer, I had to admit… I could do worse things with my time. And at 21, horrifyingly single, with no connections, degree, friends, or promised success… well I think my frontal lobe might actually be developing.

Even with this, there’s something missing- I don’t want to admit that her attitude of late probably has nothing to do with me, my ethics, or the quality of my work. Admitting this would mean beginning to sift through the other aspects of her life, mainly her personal relationships. And I’ve learned from experience that digging through this only gets me hurt. 

I can only keep the water out of my boat- that’s what I have to remind myself.