Another Post

Yeah. You're suppposed to push it when you can't. Or so I heard. The last time I did this was a year and a half ago. Write when I have nothing to write about. Or is it that I have plenty to write about? It's most likely the latter, though it's harder that way. When you have something, so much and everything, to put down somewhere whether it's for the world to see or just you, sometimes it's harder to make it come out. Because the words don't go in the right order. Or the rhythm sucks and you just get stuck on beat four. They need to invent word laxatives, because if I drink -- believing that'll help -- I just get distracted and lost on the stupid Internet. But oh how I love the Internet. I look at ESPN to see if the Spurs won or if there are signs that Larry Brown regrets his decision. And then I might check the weather. "Shop" for clothes I can't get yet. Look for biography notes on Henry Miller or any other writer who has ever grabbed me by the nape of my neck with their words. Then I start thinking again -- by now inevitably having retrieved my second beer -- about what it is I'm not writing. Why am I having trouble telling my story? A friend of mine tonight reminded me that I am an "artist," a "writer." Sometimes I accept that and sometimes I don't. More often than not it's the former, a sign, perhaps of my ability to identify what it is that makes me go. Before the last three years, and despite the fact that my best friend called me a writer (even when I was a college kid writing all the time), I wouldn't believe it. So when you're a "writer" and not writing, does that still make you a writer? Like when a tree falls in the forest and you don't hear it, does that mean it didn't fall? So I'm thinking and drinking (wine not beer) and not writing. In here I am, of course, refusing to break a paragraph (out of laziness or lack of direction?) and hoping that something hits. When I was a freshman in college, I went to this party on 1st Ave., which was on the north side of campus (the south side being for frats and sororities -- ugh). I don't remember who I was with so I'll have to make it up. Let's say I was with Aimee who was in my English class and who would be my roommate two years later. So i was with Aimee and she knew the people who threw the party. There was loud music, kegs and people either dancing or sitting around. Oh wait, now I remember who I went with. I went with Kim and this was one of those house party situations where you can't hear yourself over the music and wading through the middle of the floor to the keg takes way too much energy. I wasn't feeling it, and so I went outside. I took the long walk to the street to gather my thoughts. They were the same thoughts. Why me? Crushes for days and not even out yet. Depressed over whatever it is 18-year-old closeted dyke mystery mulattoes get depressed over. I stood on the sidewalk watching the cars drive by, wondering what all the drivers were studying (Chico's a college town; you can be pretty sure that everyone was a student). And then the next thing I heard was a bottle crash to the ground, though not anywhere near me, and the words "Nigger, go home." Well fuck you. First find my dad for me, then tell me I'm a nigger. Cuz if he ain't black, then I ain't black. But if he is black, am I black. Cuz what does that mean? So I sit here thinking and drinking, head going places outside of my control. People sleeping the night away the best they know how. And what I always come back to is that I want a car coat. A nice thin black one. Not so sure if it needs to be leather. But a brown leather car coat would be sweet. Push through this block and I'll be good. Because I have it. Looking outside of me to find out if I do is a waste. That I need to ask the question of others, Can I Write, is pointlesss, because the very act of asking tells me I know already. So just write. Shit. Like I'm on a plane flying 30,000 miles above ground going nowhere by myself with nothing to do but write. It is like that when I'm in my head facing a blank page. Nothing to do but get it down with my voice in my way in my time. I've just lit my 12th clove of the day. I have to stop. Killing myself. So I have to write one word after another to breathe. Because it's how I get my innermost out. The stuff that drives me. That reminds people they have a force in me. To give them another version of me to look at. My words don't stare back. They just are, daring people to read on. Challenging them to ask the right questions rather than make bold and usually false statements. My blog is about 600 pages long now. This makes post No. 449. Three-and-a-half years I've been writing things off the top of my head, somewhat like I'm writing this at 3:30 a.m. There's other writing I'm doing, though. The fifty pages I have is only mediocre, but that's ok. (I say that now.) It'll come in my voice which is bubbling beneath the surface. I have a desire to put myself out there in a controlled manner. Give the people what I allow them to have when I allow them to have it. So off the top of my head this early Wednesday-morning hour I have gone off, to perhaps break through a block that is hampering me. A block that sometimes scares me. If you've reached the end, then bless you for your stamina and your patience. I must sleep in order to wake up and write again.