Facing Rejection

 On Meditating, Sort Of, by Mary Oliver

Meditation, so I’ve heard, is best accomplished
if you entertain a certain strict posture.
Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree.
So why should I think I could ever be successful?
Some days I fall asleep, or land in that
even better place — half asleep — where the world, spring, summer, autumn, winter —
flies through my mind in its hardy ascent and its uncompromising descent.
So I just lie like that, while distance and time
reveal their true attitudes: they never
heard of me, and never will, or ever need to.
Of course I wake up finally
thinking, how wonderful to be who I am,
made out of earth and water,
my own thoughts, my own fingerprints —
all that glorious, temporary stuff.

I’m in an uncomfortable place right now—I’m speaking metaphorically. Yes, I long for my tiny house and a sense of permanence, but this “place” I speak of is psychological. Once again, an agent has let me go. He said, You have no platform.

There was no arguing with him. It’s true. I’m no Tik-Tok star or Kardashian influencer. No one needs me to endorse their product. The agent suggested I go off on my own. Self-publish?

Obviously he’d forgotten that I’d already done just that with some of my books on writing flash. I nodded into the phone. I was searching for the right words to indicate that I understood this was a break-up. He asked if I knew about Kindle on Amazon. Yes, I answered, again not revealing that indeed I’d used the process. I assumed he knew all this beforehand, before taking me on . . . that I was a failed author just looking for a break-out moment.

Because the agent was a businessman, he elaborated: If you sell a 1000 books for a dollar that’s $1000.

I hesitated to tell him that my sales numbers at Kindle came nowhere near a 1000 books, let alone a $1000 dollars. I only wished to get off the phone and wallow in self-pity. A good cry, at the least.

I’m 63 almost 64. There is a narrowing window for success. I tried to remember that James Schuyler the poet I most admire for his mundane observations, his exclamation points, his revelry in flowers, in sex, in meeting up with friends, the listing of the everyday, he found publishing success late in life. Many people had who we now read. But, I also knew that there were hundreds of Pulitzer winners, National Book Awardees that no one reads anymore. It is just as easy to fall into obscurity even after publishing.

All this to ask: Where am I? At this moment, in the equilibrium of time? Can I find a happy place?

I want to quit, but that would be denying a genuine part of who I am—someone who writes.

Yes, I’m a failed author, but I am, at the very least, someone who sits doen in her chair and strings words together to create worlds out of the everyday.

Thanks for reading and going with me on this journey—soon Tiny House news to report!

Sister Corita Kent's rules for work