Writing posts to Salon has given me respect for journalists, whether writers or editors; that they can knock out polished work on such short notice. I'll do my best with a post and then groan, once it's in print, at various bobbles.

In my usual writing I go over and over something; let it go cold, see it fresh, then re-write; let it go cold again, re-write, et cetera. Going cold is part of the writing, which is exactly fine for what I do. But that talent of seeing something for the first time immediately after going over and over it is not one that comes naturally to me.

I see how the writer/editor relationship could be part of what makes this happen, but, still, it's largely foreign. Yeah, exotic.

How's about Salon sequentially giving each Anonymous a permenant number? Once Anonymous 203 turned up they'd permenantly be Anonymous 203.

I haven't happened to be bothered by Anonymousity here, but maybe their having a number for a name would help things out in terms of some kind of ID, even just for posters to reference during a thread; although "to Anonymous 7/26 9:27 am" would do that.

Best -

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

It took me way too long to realize that this screwed-up not-real attitude of male fetus ownership forms the crux of anti-abortionism. Pre-fathers are stripped by abortion of the paternalistic notion of a woman "giving him a child." History is over-run with this Woman As Brood Mare crap; primogeniture; you haven't had a child till you've had a boy; on and on.

More, Roe versus Wade legally establishes the bald truth that not only is the fetus not his, nor is not a child, which it only becomes once viable: It is in fact the mother. The fetus is part and parcel of the mother, as an organ is part and parcel of the mother.

I don't think we've yet doped out the accurate role of paternity.

This is, I believe, the largest part of the vitriol against abortion, the legalization of which overturns the most ancient of male preogatives and is an especial insult to what comes out of a man's dick.

Best,

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

55 posts to your letter so far. I expected some about you and your situation.

Your pen name is Probably Overly Concerned, which might have come from Cary or the editors. But maybe you chose it for you as a description of who you take yourself to be; that maybe you're worried about probably being overly concerned. In which case, you would want that fact addressed. I wonder what in your life calls you to distract yourself this much from your life. Doing for others can be fit and proper, but it can as well be the hiding place for shifting attention away from one's own uncomfortable life.

You're having a hard time saying the right thing to make him feel better. This is a meditation all by itself. Cary's right about not trying to make him feel better. But if your life was more centered in the heart of your life, you would intuitively find yourself saying the right thing to him at the right time. Try it. Investigate this. Investigate yourself. It's doable. And, given that it's deep into the nuts and bolts of your human reason for being, it's not unpleasant.

Not that my head's always stuck on straight, but when it is, life's really something. One actually knows to say the right thing at the right time.

Best -

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

I remember being 21 in graduate school, having had a good undergraduate experience (if you don't look too closely at grades), and being self-conscious in a new way. I was aware of myself, my physical self, where before I guess I lost myself in my experience. The new awareness took me a while to get past. Here I was in a new place with new people. I don't know if it's a common developmental phase or what, or if others experience it at different ages.

Now I value it, an awareness of my physical presence as part of the environment I'm in. Part of the old discomfort included an awareness of my ego self, my thinking self, along with awareness of my physical self. It all made me very self-conscious and I HATED it. It was misery. Now, what the fuck, let it bow. Going with it has turned out to actually be enriching.

If you are going through this on top of these terrible old memories, which play on your trust of both others and your perceptions of others, good luck. It reminds me of learning to play banjo correctly after I'd learned it wrong; that the new learning was hard enough in and of itself without also having to override the old wrong pathways in my brain; and I was shooting to play at speed. Practice did make perfect; or close enough. And now I prefer guitar.

Not having met too many really mean people, I also wondered if the face book criticism of you might not have had some almost fond "Oh, there goes old Baker Street again doing her old silly stuff." Not that they might not have gotten brilliant in an internet kind of way and overstated their case, to your detriment. I don't mean to be undermining your perceptions. The experience of it all would in any case be horrific.

Best.

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")