I saw N. at the bank. She turned her back slightly as she filled out her deposit slips, and again when she walked out, so that our eyes wouldn’t meet and neither one of us would have to say hello. Her son is in a hospital with an inoperable brain tumor, just like that, after a bad headache during an otherwise normal day. I think I know why she turns away. Because pleasantries are painful, filling out the deposit slip is painful, the fact that you have to keep filling out forms, and getting gas, and starting your car, and putting dishes in the dishwasher, as if nothing has happened. Time tortures, with its insistent reminders to get moving, get organized, keep going, even when the place you were going has been erased. Your path weaves crazily up into the sky, roped around trees, diving underground. Still the clock ticks, keeps ticking, keep going, hurry up hurry up, don’t be late.
Julia Cameron manages to make everything sound portentous. She goes for a walk in a park and an eagle soars down and announces that she needs to write musicals, so she does. I don’t have any eagles. I just wake up cranky.
Anticipation is the drug the Internet traffics, especially online shopping, the elixir of an imagined future, more perfect, more serene, pain free. I wanted that this morning with a clawing hunger, desperate, grubbing. What did I want, exactly? I wanted to go on the website for Savvy Rest, and find out if the layers of latex were three inch Dunlop or two inch Talalay. This could change everything. I wanted to read reviews of latex beds, to find out if latex does work better for sleep, if there is fire retardant in the box springs. I wanted to plan a vacation in Barcelona, find book reviews of Natalie Ginsberg, and something I couldn’t quite place– maybe yoga pants, maybe fruit fly traps, maybe sheets. I woke up in full flight, running from something, hungry for escape. Not just a little hungry. Flat out. Ravenous.
Kate said that I waste time with BOTH voices. The one that says “you are a shitty failed excuse for a writer, and don’t think you’re going to get anywhere because you won’t.” And the one that says, “please stop bothering me, I’m just trying to write, how can I ever write when you are being so mean?” She said, I wish you could just sneak away and let them fight with each other and do some writing.