I\’ve been writing inside my head.
There are times when a great line will pop up, usually in the middle of the night or when I am outside, soaking up some sun rays. I am typically far from paper and pen at those moments and before I can get to a place to jot them, I lose interest.
Real talk.
I enjoy writing but notice when other things are bugging me, I can\’t be so bothered. I could have the next great novel (or story), right there, right at the tips of my fingers and waiting to drip out from my fountain pen onto a yellow lined page. But the reality pressing on me makes it go away and instead, I press on with the tasks at hand, grumbling to myself.
I had a \’Falling Down\’ moment the other day, though not quite as intense as Michael Douglas\’ …
I understood in a moment of intense irritation, how he felt. The press, the desire to get away. It was real.
Through it all, I still couldn\’t put a single word on a page.
But my dreams are vivid:
I dreamed of a young vulture in my front yard that was considering how to make a meal of our cats (in the dream, we had two of them and they would scamper about the front yard). I told the vulture (Yes, I talked to it. Yes, it listened) that it would not be making a meal of our felines. I tried to shoo it out of our tree by nudging it, which resulted in me getting some sort of sticky goo on my hand. It\’s feathers were coated in the stuff. I was on my way into the house to wash it off, disgusted by the feel, look, and smell (that I couldn\’t smell in my dream, thankfully, having experienced the odor from vultures before) when I woke up.
I dreamed about an east coast city; the streets were burned out and nearly abandoned. I rushed to see if I could help at the location where a bomb or something had gone off; the one building still had smoke and small flames coming out. Near the building was a Muslim shop. I asked one of the men if they were okay. He replied \’Are we okay? No we aren\’t okay — we need a real city.\’ I looked at him and his comrade and asked if they were okay, like physically unharmed. The second man smiled and the first one settled down and said they were okay. The second man asked me how long it had been since I\’d been in one of their stores; I told him I didn\’t live there anymore and had moved west but didn\’t live in LA so there were no shops owned by any of the brothers or sisters that I knew of. I then said I would be buying some T-shirts to bring home or something. I wandered the shop and one young man showed me a jacket or something that was like a billboard — the figures and words on it moved around like I was watching a television. I found a similar sweatshirt but one that didn\’t have moving figures on it. It felt like fake silk or whatever that stuff is that varsity jackets in high school are made out of … it was soft and slick, blue and black but shiny. I was carrying it to the counter to pay when I woke up.
Yet, not a word typed into any works in progress, no research on new ideas (yes, I have them), nothing scribbled onto a page.
I am not beaten but am resting, recuperating, healing with hope.
One day, the words will flow again …