Morning Pages: The Almost True Story of My Life

By Joseph Sutton

"Morning Pages" is about a writer, Ben Halaby, suffering from writer's block. He accidentaly stumbles across "The Artist's Way," a book about creativity by Julia Cameron. Cameron's basic principle for breaking out of a block is to write three-pages-nonstop-first-thing-in-the-morning-for-84-days. Halaby heeds Cameron's advice, and what we see, as the words come gushing out of his pen and soul, is not only the creative process in action, but we see a man turning into his old storytelling self again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Sutton
• Release date: Jul 9, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452337531

Joseph Sutton

Joseph Sutton was born in Brooklyn and raised in Hollywood. He played football at the University of Oregon and graduated with a degree in philosophy. He earned a teaching credential and a degree in history at Cal State University Los Angeles and taught high school history and English for many years. Sutton, who has been writing for more than 50 years, has published over two dozen books. His essays and short stories have appeared in numerous national magazines and journals. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Joan.

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MORNING PAGES

The Almost True Story of My Life

a novel

by

Joseph Sutton

Smashwords Edition

Copyright by Joseph Sutton

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DAY 1

Morning Pages

I’m starting my first day of waking up in the morning and coming downstairs to my office to write, to create my morning pages. I’m not supposed to let my pen leave the surface of this spiral notebook until I fill up three pages. I’m not supposed to worry about the quality of words, only the quantity. I’m to let the words gush out of me as if I were the Great Creator’s stenographer. I’m to write as fast as I can without thinking, loosening my subconscious from the lower depths so it can rise to the top.

I’m reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a book about creativity. It’s supposed to help an artist, any artist, break out of a block and get the creative juices flowing again. It’s supposed to resuscitate the artist’s faith in himself and in the Great Creator—to allow the Creator’s words to go through your arm, out of your pen, and onto a piece of paper.

I’ve heard artists such as William Saroyan and my wife June say, The words are already there; I’m just a conduit for putting them down on paper or telling a story to kids. In a similar vein, I once asked my brother Charles’ friend, Clancy Sigal, how he wrote. His answer was a question thrown back at me: What were you thinking when you ran with the football and scored touchdowns?

I wasn’t thinking, I told him, it just came naturally.

It’s April Fool’s Day, 1996. June and I had our first date exactly nineteen years ago to the day. We ate dinner at a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission District. After dinner, we walked to the Roxie Theater on 16th and Valencia to see a John Cassavetes movie. As we were standing in the long line for tickets I put my arm around her to keep her warm. She later confessed, Your body’s warmth was one of the reasons I fell in love with you. When we got to the ticket window we were told the only seats available were in the front row.

We weren’t the front-row-seat type, so we crossed the street to a Chinese restaurant, where we spent the next two hours finding out about each other. Our waiter, a Mao Tse-tung look-alike, kept serving us the most watered–down coffee in the world. Forget the coffee; June and I were connecting on all cylinders.

What made me start these morning pages today? It has to do with spending yesterday with Jerry Rishky and Alan Holliday in Mill Valley. We spent most of the day watching part of a basketball game at Alan’s bachelor pad, taking a few tokes off a joint, going for a walk, conversing with people on the street that Alan knew, and trying to come up with a name for the three of us. We couldn’t decide whether to call ourselves The Odd Trio, The Odd Triple, Trips are Better, or The Post Trio.

Alan brought up the idea of driving to an open house at a condo owned by a woman friend. That’s when the turning point of the day came for me: Heidi was there. She was the real estate agent tending the open house. What a godsend she was! She was like an angel. Maybe she was an angel. When we walked in, we found her sitting on a couch gluing her fantasy photos onto folded cards. Somehow Heidi and I started talking about Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way and how it helped her overcome her artist’s block. I was familiar with the book—it has been gathering dust on my nightstand for over a year—so I paid close attention to what she was saying.

Read the book as if you’re taking a course in college. If you follow the instructions for twelve weeks you’ll become your true artist–self again.

Heidi, angel that she was, gave each of us one of her beautiful cards before we left. I wrote something to June in it this morning, about spending another nineteen years together. She loved it.

DAY 2

The Great Censor Award

In her book, Julia Cameron says to write the following sentence over and over until I find someone from my past to repudiate it: I, Ben Halaby, am a brilliant and prolific writer. I, Ben Halaby, am a brilliant—

Brilliant? you say. You haven’t shown me one bit of brilliance in the twenty-seven years you’ve been a writer, Mr. Halaby. You’re a poor excuse for a writer. You’ve written four novels that are still unpublished. Of your seventy-five short stories, only a dozen have been published. You’ve sold only one book in all those years, and that wasn’t even your own—it was a book of quotations, words you took from others. Now you’re trying to peddle How to Buy a Used Car Without Getting Ripped Off to credit unions. What a joke! Who do you think you are, calling yourself a brilliant writer? You’re a sham. And prolific? How can you say you’re prolific when all you wrote last year was two short stories, a couple of essays, and that used car booklet?

Who’s saying those nasty words to me? Could it be Miss Murphy, my second-grade teacher at Selma Avenue School in Hollywood? The first day back from the winter holidays she called on every student in class to stand up and say what he or she got for Christmas. Me, I was from a large Syrian-Jewish family. We didn’t give Christmas presents. In fact, we didn’t even exchange Hanukkah presents.

What did you receive for Christmas, Patty, Jerry, Barbara, Ronnie, Richard, Diane, Anita? Each of them in turn stood up and told the class about their presents.

What did you receive for Christmas, Ben?

I stood up. Should I tell the class I’m Jewish, that we don’t celebrate Christmas? No, I can’t do that, they’ll make fun of me. I. . .I got an electric train. I felt like a worm.

My third-grade teacher, Miss Seenor, was a shriveled-up old woman who reminded me of a witch. She ridiculed me in front of the class one day.

One afternoon, near the end of the school day, Miss Seenor asked the class in her crotchety voice, Who would like to go to the office and find out the time for me?

My hand, along with a bunch of my classmates’ hands, shot up.

Ben, she said, pointing to me, please hurry to the office.

I darted out of the classroom and ran to the office. The school secretary was sitting at her desk typing on a sturdy black Royal. What can I do for you, young man?

The clock in Miss Seenor’s room isn’t working. She sent me to find out the time.

Do you know how to tell time, or shall I tell you what it is?

I know how, I said, looking up at the octagonal wooden clock on the wall next to a picture of President Truman. I said to myself, 2:45 plus five minutes equals 2:50. I double-checked before flying back to class.

The second I entered the room, Miss Seenor asked, What time is it, Ben?

It’s 2:50, I said, proud of my newly acquired ability to tell time.

That’s not the way to say it, she snapped. You don’t say ‘2:50,’ you say ‘ten minutes to three.’

The whole class broke into loud laughter as I slumped into my seat, trying to make myself as small as possible.

When I was nine, the eight of us Halabys moved from our small three–bedroom, one-bathroom house on the corner of Homewood Avenue and Wilcox to a much larger one on Fairfax Avenue just below Hollywood Boulevard. I transferred from Selma Avenue School to Gardner Street School. Miss Gadding was my new fourth-grade teacher. She was an attractive woman with short dark-brown hair and a nasal voice. She always wore straight skirts to her knees that showed her shapely calves. She also wore a black whistle around her neck that she sometimes used to hit students over the head with if they got on her nerves.

One day, while she was going over a math lesson with the class, I asked my new friend, Dennis Riordan—later to become my arch-rival—if he would teach me how to burp at will. Our seats were in the back of the room. Go like this, he whispered. He closed his mouth and swallowed some air, his Adam’s apple rising slightly—and just like that, he produced a soft burp. I wanted so much to learn Riordan’s impressive trick that I kept trying and trying. Then, all of a sudden, a very loud BURP shook Room 16. Within seconds, Riordan unintentionally followed with an even louder BURRRP.

Miss Gadding stood over us, her face contorted with anger, her whistle in hand. Without warning she hit both of us over the head with it. She went to her desk, scribbled a note, and sent us to the principal’s office with it.

The principal was a middle-aged woman who always wore a long, flowing black dress down to her ankles. She read the note, reprimanded us for our behavior, and then smacked our behinds with a ruler. It didn’t even hurt compared to Miss Gadding’s whistle.

So whose voice keeps telling me I’m not a brilliant and prolific writer? Is it Miss Gadding’s voice?

Maybe it’s Mr. Masters, my seventh-grade social studies teacher at Bancroft Junior High. I idolized that man. I wanted to be a teacher just like him because he was humorous and always seemed considerate of his students until I realized one day that something was wrong with him.

He was walking to his car after school, wearing a heavy herringbone-tweed overcoat and carrying a briefcase. I thought I was pretty fleet of foot back then, so I boldly challenged Mr. Masters to a race.

He stopped and said, I’ll race you, Halaby, if the winner gets to swat the loser.

I don’t know about that, Mr. Masters. Why don’t we just race to see who’s faster?

No dice, he laughed, and turned back toward his car.

I’ve been a lousy negotiator my whole life. I caved in and agreed, Okay, we’ll race for a swat.

We raced fifty yards—he still wearing his herringbone-tweed overcoat and holding onto his briefcase—and he beat me by ten yards. I should have known better than to recklessly challenge a former sprinter out of USC. We walked into the gym office where he found the paddle that the gym teachers used for swatting unruly boys. It was twice the size of an ordinary ping-pong paddle.

Mr. Masters, so help me God, wound up and hit me in the rear end with such force that I almost blacked out.

That man wasn’t a soul mate of mine, he was a pervert.

So my enemy—the subversive critic inside me, the great censor and humiliator, the person who’s telling me I’m not a brilliant and prolific writer—is either that old prune Miss Seenor or the depraved Ken Masters. Julia Cameron says I can have only one censor, so I’ll choose the one who lashed out at me in front of my peers.

The winner of the Great Censor Award goes to my third grade-teacher, Miss Seenor.

DAY 3

The Bully

Julia Cameron’s book tells me to keep writing about the culprits, the negative forces in my life.

One of those people was Frank Samuels. It was a hot summer day in L.A. and I was playing shortstop on the same team as Samuels. We were both thirteen years old. The other team’s batter swung and hit a looping fly ball, a Texas-leaguer, into short center field. I started for the ball with my back to the plate. Samuels—big, fast, powerful—came tearing in from center field. I was running with my arms outstretched, my head tilted back to see the ball, calling, I got it! I got it! Samuels thought he had it. I couldn’t see him, but he could see me. We collided.

I writhed on the ground trying to get my breath back. My coach and teammates crowded around me. Pretty soon my breathing returned to normal. I was hot and sweaty, and my white T-shirt stuck to me. I sat up and looked at Samuels. For some screwy reason he had a smile on his face. That meant only one thing: he had run into me on purpose. I was furious. My blood is boiling right now, just thinking about that incident. It was an incredible act of malice. As soon as our coach helped me to my feet I lunged for Samuels, not caring how big and strong he was or whether he was my teammate. But before I could take a step, my right knee buckled under me and I saw the thick green grass rush up to my face.

A ligament in my right knee was torn. I had to wear a heavy plaster cast from the top of my thigh down to my ankle for six weeks.

There were two more incidents involving Samuels and me. The first occurred when I entered Fairfax High and was a pledge for a club called the Paragons. On initiation night, Samuels, who was a half-year ahead of me, was sitting in a chair and made me sit on the floor in front of him. He kept hitting my head with his knuckles—hard, maybe thirty times. With each blow my loathing for him grew deeper and stronger. Oh, there were others who salivated at treating me and my fellow initiates as if we were less than human for a couple of weeks, but Frank Samuels was the most cruel and barbaric of them all. After becoming a Paragon, I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to treat pledges the way Samuels and his ilk had treated us; I would protect them from such sadists.

The other incident took place when we were seniors on the Fairfax High football team. We were playing Hollywood High, our cross-town rival. For us this was the big time, the Big Show. The Hollywood stands were packed with red-and-white-clad students, the Fairfax side with crimson and gold.

Only a minute remained in the game. I was the quarterback. The score was tied, 6–6. We had possession of the ball near the 50-yard line. I rolled to my right and spotted our end, Eddie Lingo, way downfield. On the run, I threw the most perfect pass of my life, a 50-yard spiral that Eddie caught on the 3-yard line, where he was immediately tackled.

We had no more time-outs. The clock was running and we quickly formed a huddle. All right, you guys, I said, elated with the pass I had just thrown, I brought us down here, I’m taking it in.

It was probably the worst choice of words ever made in a huddle by any quarterback in the history of football. It was selfish, arrogant, and disrespectful. But I was all revved up; I knew we were going to score, and I wanted to be the hero.

I called my play in the huddle—Sixteen fake dive. Frank Samuels, my nemesis, our right tackle, gave me a look of disgust.

We broke from the huddle and lined up. Ready! I shouted, go! and the ball was snapped into my hands. I took two quick steps to my right and faked a handoff to our huge right–halfback, Bill Bulldozer Peters, running into the line. I kept the ball and tried to follow him into the end zone. Two Hollywood linemen were smack–dab right in my path, and pow—they nailed me good and hard. One of them hit me squarely in my already sore right thigh. I got up very slowly and barely made it back to the huddle.

Samuels had that sadistic grin on his face again. He’d taken his revenge by letting his man in on the play.

On the next play, just before the gun sounded, I handed the ball to Bulldozer and he lumbered in for the winning touchdown.

After the game, as we were filing onto the school bus in our dirty, sweaty uniforms, Samuels came up and grabbed me by my jersey. Why’d you say that in the huddle? he demanded, pushing me backwards. He was speaking for the whole team and I could respect that. But he knew that I literally had only one leg to stand on. It takes a whole team to win a game, Halaby, he growled.

Luckily for me, a few of our teammates came between us.

As it turned out, I couldn’t play in the last game of the season because of my badly injured thigh. All we had to do was beat hapless Hamilton High, the worst team in the Western League that year, and we lost. I lost. That’s what happens when a person gets greedy. It was the publicity that ruined me. A person unused to getting his name in the papers starts to believe what he reads, even if he is aware that the sportswriter doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If we had beaten Hamilton in the last game we would have been the Western League champions two years in a row, a feat no Fairfax team or quarterback—not even presidential candidate Jack Kemp, five years ahead of me—had ever accomplished. But because of my bloated ego, I got hurt. Instead of hurt, my mother would have said punished. God punished you, she would have said if she had known what transpired in the huddle.

Thirty years later, in 1987, I apologized to Bulldozer at our class reunion. I played selfishly our senior year, I told him. The headlines went to my head: ‘Halaby Leads Fairfax to Stunning Victory,’ ‘Halaby Sparkles,’ ‘Halaby Does It Again.’ I wasn’t thinking of the team, Bill, I was thinking of myself. I’m sorry for the way I acted.

Bulldozer looked at me and said gently, Don’t worry about it, Ben, we all make mistakes.

His words were like God absolving me of all guilt.

Frank Samuels was at the same reunion. I don’t know why, but I didn’t hate him like I thought I would.

DAY 4

The Killers vs. the Shining Stars

I hear my wife June’s friend Tova talking to Melosha, her eight-year-old daughter. She won’t stop lecturing. What a killer she is!

Tova and Melosha arrived in town last week from Tennessee. Tova is outgoing, boisterous, strong, controlling, wanting love, needing it, and not getting it from either a man or her family. From what I gather, she’s considered the black sheep of her family: she’s unpredictable, rebellious, and smokes too much pot. On the other hand, her daughter Melosha is a quiet, dignified young lady.

June met Tova on a commune in New Mexico in the mid–sixties. Both were true hippies back then.

All I can think of right now is Miss Seenor—old, wrinkled, and shriveled—who reminds me of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Miss