Effort Is Key

So, the ladies are back in town safe n' sound & this is Eleanor subsequently destroying my 3rd draft of the 9,000-word short story I have been working on for the past six months. It's okay - I have a backup.

Here, six months into this "short" story, it's finally shaping up...into something. I don't know if it'll be good enough to get me into a writing program (hope so), but I think it's not bad for a first attempt. Not too bad, anyway. A good effort...and effort is key...so I've heard (repeatingly).

When I was a kid, growing up Southern Baptist, I learned that God's judgment is based not only on a person's deeds, but his efforts, his intentions, and yea, even his passing thoughts. And so at a certain age, I remember trying not to think "bad" thoughts - which seemed to make the bad thoughts multiply, then swarm in droves. Though they sometimes freaked me out and/or aroused me, the bad thoughts were always a lot more interesting than my good thoughts, which was a situation that confused me and sort of made me think I was damned to eternal Hellfire. I got over that, of course, but it took time. Ideas like "God will hurt you if you think bad thoughts" can be very damaging to the psyche - which is why Christian (or any) fundamentalists are, for the most part, Nucking Futs.

Back when I was working on the psychiatric unit, I worked with a lot of patients who were tortured by their own "bad" thoughts. Quite a few psychotic patients were terrified of Satan and other, more elaborate and refined demonic presences. And more than a few depressed or anxious patients were depressed and anxious essentially because life had managed to rip into their goody-goody persona and exposed some of the big, bad repressed material underneath. What am I getting at? God must hate the mentally ill. Maybe if they just tried a little harder God wouldn't send them to live forever in the lake of fire with The Devil. Same for the gays.

Lenny Bruce said that "Every day, people are leaving the Church and getting back to God." I don't know exactly what he meant by that, but I tend to agree. Then again, I haven't visited every church on the planet, so I can't pass judgment on them, either. I grew up in The South, though, so I have been to enough to know this: I am not impressed. (And my little girl certainly isn't gonna get sold on Original Sin. Fuck that. She's gonna get the opposite: Original Ahite-ness, Original Shapeliness.)

I talked to the Unmoved Mover last night in a dream, and it said "The universe does not revolve around our religious beliefs. Gawd don't care none too much about all our pretty little individual decisions to accept or reject dogma. There's bigger fish to fry, in other words. So fry 'em. Show a little goddamn effort. And eat 'em, too. Why? Because God in Heaven smiles upon those enjoy their fried fish and feed their daughters short stories - esp. ones about trolls and imps and faeries and kids navigating a magical world with keen wonderment." That's what my dream told me, anyway. But maybe I'm nucking futs - maybe I belong on a psychiatric unit.