Thursday, November 20, 2008

procrastinating upstairs

I am sitting in the office upstairs where I have often worked before. This is a space I used to sleep in, or barely sleep. I would sit at the desk till I couldn't work any more. I would lie down on the futon and then it would be morning, but still dark and my computer would still be a bright space beside me empty of everything except possibilities. I wrote "His Father's Son" in this office. It was a book that exploded from me almost like a boil that has stretched too tightly and begun to weep. It hurt me just as much. I could say I became infected by it. I succumbed to the madness of that book and there was damage done to me and to others, but it was over quickly. 8 months in the writing, another two years of lingering, worrying, letting the idea go.

There is a box on the top shelf that says "Vivre Archive" from my book "A Little Death". There is a shelf in the next room filled with moleskine notebooks and I guess that most of them are filled up with "His Father's Son", the handwritten texts because there amongst them is a little red book in which it all began.

Right now Christopher is working alongside me and I feel the wonderful collegiality of his presence. He is a writer I admire very much, and only this morning I was thinking about his quiet and plodding commitment to his work, nothing like my erratic spark, errant firecracker, spluttering, blustering, scattering pretty light and then shooting off in some seemingly random direction.

Mozart is playing (his choice). Sitting beside him, writing like this somehow feels like the eye of the storm or maybe like traveling in his wake, like a dolphin in the wake of a whale.

I am not in the same focused space. I have been, but I am not today. Today I am tired and scattered but happy all the same. We are writing together, even if I am only playing with the past, chatting with a friend, glancing occasionally at overseas markets. I will have to get down to it sooner or later.

Here in this cyber-place I am treating you all to a lesson in procrastination.

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