Every morning I get up and make a pot of coffee, equaling four cups in my cute little coffee maker.

Then, I pour the entire pot into this gigantic cup I have, which holds one quart of beverage.

So, when I claim to be down to “one cup of coffee a day,” know that I am not exactly lying. However, I am not exactly telling the truth either, since the single cup is actually four cups worth. In other words, every morning I get up and drink a quart of coffee.

This, combined with forgetting to hydrate, might have something to do with why I had a splitting headache all day yesterday.  So I drank a lot of water throughout the day, especially last night before bedtime, and also in the morning.  The headache went away eventually – but it sure lasted a long time.

In a way, it’s a good thing I got the headache.  It served as a buffering force to keep me from becoming too overjoyed after receiving the shock of my life, and seeing that another one of my articles has been published, this time in Street Spirit. The thrill of having two articles published in two different places two days apart — after not having anything published for my entire life until five months ago — would have been too much for me, had I not been granted the annoying headache, which effectively distracted me from my budding over-elation.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised by this, because I had earlier sent reams of work to Terry Messman, the publisher, permitting him to use any of it that he saw fit, and edit it in any way he felt was appropriate. I made that decision after discovering that I completely trusted his editing, and also completely concurred with his vision. But I was still stunned by the sudden publication, partly because of its proximity to the previous publication, and partly because of the hugeness of the way that I was personally gifted by his use and placement of this particular article:

Breakthrough

Homeless Man Resting on Church Steps – Jonathan Burstein

For one thing, he gave me the entire back page, so that somebody could easily see my name simply by picking up a paper and flipping it quickly front and back. For another thing, he selected an article based on a blog post of mine that clearly led up to a plug for my musical and a request for money to help me move this project forward. Finally, the article selected was just about the most revealing thing I’ve ever written in my life.

And this is a good thing. There’s something about honesty that has power, especially when the honesty is consistent, and extended over a long period of time. I’m also finding that, in this world based largely on appearance and affectation, real gut level honesty is relatively rare. I think that we as Writers are fortunate in a certain regard, because when we sit alone at our desks and pour out the pieces of our passion, there is nobody there to filter or judge our words, to tell us that our beliefs are unwise or socially unconventional, to discourage us by telling us that we’re full of malarkey when we’re doing our darndest to get the salient truth out to a conceivable readership with whom those particular truths might resonate.

So anyway, I’ve been doubly blessed this week, and this coming on my having locked myself out late at night a couple days ago and felt forced to rent a hotel room for the night before finding my keys at the grocery store lost-and-found in the morning.  My Starving Artist status will be assuaged somewhat when I get the two paychecks for the articles. Hopefully it will be enough to pay my Internet bill and buy groceries, without which I’d have been totally strapped.

Speaking of which, the topic came up the other day at the Recovery Center where I volunteer, how there are two subjects that are considered taboo in our culture, and yet almost everybody has issues with both — sex and money.

Sometimes, when I talk about either of those subjects too much, someone will become really frustrated and even tell me to shut up — which reaction is probably a large part of why these subjects have become taboo.   We’re just not comfortable discussing them, and we’re not often comfortable hearing about them.

I say this — and yet there is a donate button on almost every page on this site.  Why?  Because I finished a certain musical a matter of months ago, and I am not able to package the musical and send it out to theatre companies, with a decent demo recording sampling some of the songs in the show, because I simply do not have the money to do so.

Believe me, I hate the sight of all those donate buttons, and I cannot wait till the day comes when I can joyfully remove them all!  The idea of promoting a project about which I am passionate in the same manner as one might sell a used car frankly makes me nauseous.  Once I get the money, can hire the singers, can buy a microphone, can make the demo, can afford postage to send out the packages, etc. etc. etc., all those obnoxious buttons will be removed, and I can breathe a sigh of relief, go on to the next stage, and hopefully never have to ask anybody for a buck and a half again.  You know why?

Because I don’t want any bucks.  I want to live a quiet, reclusive, healthy life for the rest of my days, as modestly as possible, until the day I die.  It’s not so much that I don’t like what money does to people, because I’ve met an awful lot of really nice rich people, as well as a few pretty mean and nasty poor people.   So it’s not that (in case anybody’s ever wondered.)

What I don’t like — is what money does to me.   And if you knew some of the whacked out decisions I have made on a couple rare occasions when I suddenly received a lot of money out of the blue, you wouldn’t like it either.  That’s why every penny of these donations goes to my friend Danielle, who knows how to handle money  — which is one great gift that I do not happen to have.

Another great gift I don’t have is the Gift of Brevity.  Therefore I will close.  But if you want to know how much money I need and exactly where it will be going, go ahead and fill out the contact form.  You might be curious as to my immediate budgetary needs, whether you personally can help or not.

Enough said!

Please donate to Eden in Babylon.
Anything Helps – God Bless!