I’m writing a short story right now and it’s a heavy one, which makes it difficult to write anything unheavy. Just so you know
Also, maybe you should get your affairs in order
I am trying to shake it off, you know, because this story is making me reclusive and weird like these kinds of stories tend to do – and although I can play normal pretty well – this one’s making me careful in ways that are freaking me, and Daisy, the frigg out.
There’s your proof right there because normally they would freak us the fuck out. And how
Also I find myself getting all responsible, or at least trying to get all responsible, and the things I am doing include dressing appropriately and cleaning up after myself. I know. It’s frightening. And that little bit of advice up there in orange? The one at the very beginning? It’s really meant for me more than you although, you know, please take care of yourself.
Jesus – just listen to me
One of the reasons I like winter is that I can go ahead and get all reclusive and weird. It’s easy to hide in the dark while secretly mulling over dreadful plot lines and making up unsavoury characters whose names I mutter into the cold air until the right one twinkles into place.
But this story can’t seem to wait for winter. It is being very persistent.
I keep trying to change it while I can, you know, while the other characters still think Jane is only missing. But it will not change, so I am letting it out as is, all the while feeling very sorry for the characters who I can’t seem to spare, especially Jane’s brother who thinks he may have said the something that started the everything and, btw, he’s right.
Sometimes it feels like I am just taking dictation when I write if that makes any sense to anybody
To make matters worse, I’m reading Eugene O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey Into Night. It’s a great work and it blooms with delicious sticky substance – best kept for dark and stormy winter days – not so much when I have to make light at lunch on the picnic table outside eating peaches in the sunshine under skippy blue skies with giddy co-workers.
There are sentences in that play that I could curl up with and savour all day long so I hope you can appreciate how difficult it is to act normal. It’s way more of an effort than it appears. I hope at least
When I like a writer, I try to read everything they ever wrote so I get calls from reception all the time and I run to rescue the dense little packages I ordered from Amazon because for whatever reason most of these books are out of print. The packages come from little bookshops all over North America and who knows how many people have read them – wept over them even – and I love to see the passages previous readers deemed worthy of further thought with underlines and highlights, folded pages, a couple of words in the margin which allow a glimpse into unknown hearts, minds, temperaments.
I also like to find out about the writers, and for this – although I’ve said I don’t google – I google. What I don’t google are things that don’t matter but what Eugene O’Neill wrote in a letter to his son matters very much, especially when I am hanging off of every single word this guy ever wrote:
“Any fool knows that to work hard at something you want to accomplish is the only way to be happy.”
I am not sure every fool actually knows this.
Musical interlude
I decided to drive down to work today in spite of the closures and the extra hour or so because driving takes roughly three times longer than the train, and because I went to the gym earlier and my podcast was still queued, when I plugged my phone in the car to charge it, the podcast came on full blast, and since it’s my gym podcast only, I decided to play some Pink Floyd and man, am I ever glad I did.
I have an excellent sound system in my car, and a sunroof, and although I sometimes question whether I really need these things, from now on the answer is What? I can’t hear you. The music’s too loud!
So I listened and I sang and I felt every gorgeous drop of it
And now I’m all fierce and fearless and have no regrets about Jane’s fate and the worse I can make it for her lousy brother, the better.
