Knowing what words are like, where they might come from, the writer knows uncertainty.   Quite away from narrowing down on a thing, the writer must open up to words, to let them come toward him, gravitationally coalescence.  That was my mode.  That was how it worked.

Some people write about a certain topic.  They'll write cleverly and self-confidently.  But that was not my mode, when it came time to write.  A hokey explorer, pretending to be a Lindbergh, acting a part, but being in modes of blank openness.  That's how you start out.  It's not the matter of discipline it's made out to be.  Rather, it's like any relationship.  Steadiness.  Showing up.  Allowing an exchange.  Memory turned into useful elements.  Capturing thoughts on camera, as if they were birds, the science of a child.


I swear, sometimes it's like I cannot trust myself to go out.  A few glasses of wine and a bite to eat at work with the chef, turns into meeting the chef out down where there is live music.  A couple of beers, conversation, a musician I recognize, and then on the way back, stopping at the tavern for last call, and then back to P Street, a late burger, then up further, lonely, for a couple slices of pizza, and then the next day, allergies, wheat, beer, I feel terrible.  Wasn't what I was aiming for.  But that is a life many know.  I will not claim to be a Hank Williams, a Shane MacGowan, a Hemingway, a Fitzgerald, a Faulkner, but I can get them, sensitive beings, proud of their creativity, in touch with it, but having a difficult time with the rest of things.


In a dream I am wearing a suit, meeting her in New York as a date in a social situation, remarkable wall paper, ease, elegance.  And I am surprisingly normal.  Normal behaving, normal acting, accepted as normal, treated well.  There is fine golden wallpaper in drawing rooms and conservatories, the kind of which you see on the finest of ties.  We visit many places in the city, and it is as golden and as civilized and strife free as the wallpaper in conservatories.  Even skeptical snobs of enormous pedigree like me, and she too is delighted with me.  I am who I am, and she realizes I've grown up, and respects me.  It's a pleasant time.  Lots of good stops to make.  She shops for wine with me and picks up the bill, including the Burgundy I select at this fancy wine boutique.  We are going to her house, her parents, for dinner, and that is a big thing of being welcome.  As should have happened, though in reality it did not, far from it.

When did I become, stubbornly, not normal?

Antic disposition.  When did I become weird?  I became weird at that time.  A rebellion.  Beethoven, gone deaf, hard to access.  An atelier.


I am embarrassed by the schedule I keep, thus my life.  Hard to get up before 3 in the afternoon, night shifts.  Too much dough.  I end up feeling like crap, between ragweed pollen, IPA, pizza slice, pigs feet with bistrot bread.

And nights off, I have to be very careful.  I'm really not allowed to go out.  A sober trip to the grocery store and back.   Laundry.  Another round of dishes from the ongoing attempt to feed myself adequately.  The chores of writing.  The chores of thinking a new line in life.