Torpor

We live very regimented lives. (Actually, I just happen to live one, and I'm generalizing, perhaps beyond what I'm entitled.) The only thing I can really say is that I'm not regimented about is my writing. (My personal writing, not stuff that's read by others--this included--or essays and reports and the like. They actually make me angry and sometimes depressed.) When I'm hacking away at the keyboard, I can be anywhere. But there's a down side: my inspiration comes and goes at the strangest times, as is beefitting the only surely tempestuous thing in my life. Sometimes it is therapeutic, helping guide me with an outstretched hand away from anger and other such feelings. Sometimes it is self-loathing in the extreme--and it is very good at it, wearing me down with its relentless logic. It's nice when it can be witty, but that is rare. And there are weeks and days when it just up and leaves, and leaves me a panting mess of meat on the sidewalk or subway platform. On days like that a subway platform is just that; that raving lunatic three seats over is merely a nuisance, all my failures are nothing but ulcers waiting to happen, and all my stories just some slimy tongue restlessly beating about the confines of its mouth. There is no telling how long the dry spell may last. But my writing comes back to me, and we make up. Maybe I'm a chump; maybe I need to assert my needs--daily word counts, finish a story per week, etc.--or maybe I just need to let it continue being the great unregulated, untamed abode of the freedom the rest of my life dares not emulate.

I think I'm one step closer to understanding why the really good novelists ended up miserable alcoholic suicides. (Part of it has to do with the rise of the audio-visual generation and its strange drugs, but that's getting way ahead of myself and almost obscure. Maybe one day I'll actually end up on this topic.)

Consider: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."