It’s time for me to take a break from dice games and alcohol, and focus on writing something that is both compelling and humorous. After all, I want your brief visit here to be relatively pain-free. Furthermore, it will help me feel better about myself, and forget about the fact that I don’t have anything to do today. Ah, what a stunning life I’ve cultivated! Unfortunately, you’re not going to read anything enlightening or laugh-inducing today, as my synapses aren’t firing like they normally do. I arose at 6:00am this morning to make another airport run. Now I’m paying the price for my early awakening. A severe fog has rolled into my skull, and I can’t wrap my brain around any single idea for a long enough time to volunteer a reaction. Instead, here’s a snippet of creativity I just transcribed from one of my notebooks I’ve been filling up with weird free-writes. Remember when I used to devote Mondays to creative writing? That was always fun, right? Maybe I’ll bring it back for a month, so there will be one less day each week when I have to actually form a thought.
Way Down Yonder (Oct. ’07)
Over gaping valleys pock-marked with barren rose bushes, over hidden streams trickling and sparkling as rays of sunlight slither through cracks in a ceiling of tree limbs and leaves, over rolling golden hills stretching infinitely in all directions, over dirty lakes frothing and acidic, with mosquitoes swarming and water bubbling like a cauldron, I am reaching out for you. This voice carries like a moth in a breeze, wings flapping vigorously, darting between planes and utterly lacking control, like a boulder catapulted in the direction of an advancing army, whistling as it loses altitude, like a hawk stalking its prey between the walls of a canyon, gliding and diving, accelerating and rising, it is a sonic wind that blows a bottled note onto your distant shore. Way down yonder past the city streets and the gaping creek, behind the piles of dead brown leaves stacked to heaven and the barren playground longing for its children to slide, swing and climb again, out past the abandoned airstrip whose runways have grown over, whose landing lights have long been broken, schoolyard lovers meet. Eyes ablaze, tiny hairs standing on end, hearts alive and cascading into each other, whet lips wet with nerves and tenderness meet and silence strangles everything. Whether by fire or disease, gunshot or old age, by the hand of a stranger or friend, whether while laughing or while crying, in ecstasy, euphoria, or indescribable pain, whether asleep or awake, clothed or nude, while driving or as a passenger, remember how this scene was once set. Never feeling the slightest hint of remorse, never knowing any better and placing faith in those untrustworthy souls conspiring to drain the life from men, never understanding words spoken in foreign tongues or native ones, never listening to the advice of passersby, never again to see the dust-collected birch trees bend under the weight of snow, or taste the smell of burning firewood in the back of a desiccated throat. As the coyotes bay before they feed, as the sun dips behind a rock and bathes the surrounding mountains in red and gold, as the storm at sea swells, sending walls of water over the decks of rickety ships, as a prisoner in a dungeon prays to find his way out through dimly-lit catacombs, I am still sitting here, the writer alone awaiting an invitation to initiate introspection.
