Mornings
There's this Jekyll and Hyde thing that occurs in the space of a single day. In the mornings I sit at the edge of a clearing, facing a wild forest, beastial and unexplored. By the afternoon, a bulldozer emerges between the trees, knocks over a couple of saplings, reverses back into the growth,and picnickers enter the clearing, spread out a cloth and stare at me, munching pretzels.
The morning is the time to write. The membrane that separates day from night is at its thinnest. Stuff drifts across it. By afternoon, everything is different, as though there is no howling desperation and never was. The sun is gradually heading home, and everything is homey, things as reliable as curbs in a California subdivision. So, this is the safe time, which turns out to be the bad time to operate in real time, which is what so-called creativity seems to be all about.
Was it Flaubert who told his servant to lock him in his office, and not let him out until a certain amount of time, or a certain number of fresh pages, had elapsed? I don't see how Flaubert could have survived without the Internet, which will tell you that Tuscany is bursting with villas, pornography is bursting with the breasts, that salon.com is bursting with news, new plays are bursting onto the London stage, the economy is bursting to burst and "bursting" traces its origins far back in the Indo-European linguistic evolution. By now it's 11 a.m., and the morning's bursting is imminent. By the time the afternoon comes bursting into your consciousness, you can count on your consciousness being pleasantly drained of anything threatening and substantial. How wonderful to be a writer.
I can't pinpoint the moment at which I decided I was retired. The whole shift in job description, or joblessness description, felt like going to Macy's to buy a shirt and coming home with a potted rubber plant. We need clothing, or think we do, when what we actually crave is more indoor photosynthesis. I didn't ask anyone's permission, even Marlou's. It was time. Something in me had given way, given out and needed to be given free rein. That was a couple of years ago. Now, I've got the mornings.
There's a sort of rising panic, a fear of emptiness, I would call it. Is this what's meant by the fear of the blank page or, more contemporaneously, fear of the blank screen? At its psychoanalytic core, is this emptiness the same as infantile abandonment? Does anyone know? Does it matter? What definitely matters is that the clock is advancing, from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. and even later. This is my life. This is my chance to say what I want to. This is my party and I'll cry if I want to. You would cry too. Maybe you wouldn't.
I don't know, but it's 10:45, and there's only one thing to do. The thing I was born to do, it seems. The one reliable creative act in this or any other day. Go to Peet's. After all, the espresso is hissing, caffeine wafting about in clouds, patrons hunching at tables. Think of what I'm missing. There's the guy with a laptop computer, the one who is always here and always busy. Because he is the most reliable Peet's attendee, his table provides a social anchor. There's the guy retired from Sunset Magazine. There's the guy retired from, who knows? We are all retired, that is the point. And this realization hits me just about the time the caffeine does. I am now bursting with caffeinated urgency, time's winged chariot with its flaps up and hurtling toward...nothing in particular for these guys. They are hanging out. One talks about his heart condition. The laptop guy has had a software epiphany, which he assures us, is fully patentable. Okay. I've had my latte. Time for home.
Home is where the heart is, the hearth is and the screen is. Cursor blinking, time sinking, the afternoon winking. Yes, it's almost 12 o'clock, and the spell will be broken. It felt like a bad spell, something a witch had designed, but maybe it was just a dry spell. And the problem with droughts is that they come and go, and you've got to have the dam ready and the spillways open. Or you'll miss the flood. Because you never know when it's time to not write. Except that it's best in the morning.
The morning is the time to write. The membrane that separates day from night is at its thinnest. Stuff drifts across it. By afternoon, everything is different, as though there is no howling desperation and never was. The sun is gradually heading home, and everything is homey, things as reliable as curbs in a California subdivision. So, this is the safe time, which turns out to be the bad time to operate in real time, which is what so-called creativity seems to be all about.
Was it Flaubert who told his servant to lock him in his office, and not let him out until a certain amount of time, or a certain number of fresh pages, had elapsed? I don't see how Flaubert could have survived without the Internet, which will tell you that Tuscany is bursting with villas, pornography is bursting with the breasts, that salon.com is bursting with news, new plays are bursting onto the London stage, the economy is bursting to burst and "bursting" traces its origins far back in the Indo-European linguistic evolution. By now it's 11 a.m., and the morning's bursting is imminent. By the time the afternoon comes bursting into your consciousness, you can count on your consciousness being pleasantly drained of anything threatening and substantial. How wonderful to be a writer.
I can't pinpoint the moment at which I decided I was retired. The whole shift in job description, or joblessness description, felt like going to Macy's to buy a shirt and coming home with a potted rubber plant. We need clothing, or think we do, when what we actually crave is more indoor photosynthesis. I didn't ask anyone's permission, even Marlou's. It was time. Something in me had given way, given out and needed to be given free rein. That was a couple of years ago. Now, I've got the mornings.
There's a sort of rising panic, a fear of emptiness, I would call it. Is this what's meant by the fear of the blank page or, more contemporaneously, fear of the blank screen? At its psychoanalytic core, is this emptiness the same as infantile abandonment? Does anyone know? Does it matter? What definitely matters is that the clock is advancing, from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. and even later. This is my life. This is my chance to say what I want to. This is my party and I'll cry if I want to. You would cry too. Maybe you wouldn't.
I don't know, but it's 10:45, and there's only one thing to do. The thing I was born to do, it seems. The one reliable creative act in this or any other day. Go to Peet's. After all, the espresso is hissing, caffeine wafting about in clouds, patrons hunching at tables. Think of what I'm missing. There's the guy with a laptop computer, the one who is always here and always busy. Because he is the most reliable Peet's attendee, his table provides a social anchor. There's the guy retired from Sunset Magazine. There's the guy retired from, who knows? We are all retired, that is the point. And this realization hits me just about the time the caffeine does. I am now bursting with caffeinated urgency, time's winged chariot with its flaps up and hurtling toward...nothing in particular for these guys. They are hanging out. One talks about his heart condition. The laptop guy has had a software epiphany, which he assures us, is fully patentable. Okay. I've had my latte. Time for home.
Home is where the heart is, the hearth is and the screen is. Cursor blinking, time sinking, the afternoon winking. Yes, it's almost 12 o'clock, and the spell will be broken. It felt like a bad spell, something a witch had designed, but maybe it was just a dry spell. And the problem with droughts is that they come and go, and you've got to have the dam ready and the spillways open. Or you'll miss the flood. Because you never know when it's time to not write. Except that it's best in the morning.
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