The hard work of writing, for me, is in disciplining my mind to focus on one thing and carrying that idea through to its conclusion. This is true for anything I try to do creatively, or even these silly little blog posts. I suppose practicing would help. When I get this way, I can feel a type of energy building. I can hear an internal voice narrating lots of different things, walking down multiple paths. I then get overwhelmed by choice, I look for distractions to… cut down on the noise, refocus, or find an easy way out… I’m not really sure. In those moments, I pick up my phone, or go do dishes, or walk around the house. All this does is break what little concentration I already had.
This morning, sitting at the end of the sofa reading and sort of writing by the end table lamp, I am fractured in my attention. I want to write about a text conversation I had last night. I started a poem about the time I sat in the waiting room as my fiancee underwent a biopsy. I wrote a line or two about the knots of desires we try to untangle and a line or two about morning light like a loaded gun – shot through and bathing the world in gold (there is no morning light here today – it’s gray). In my head, I’ve started developing a character named Zika Jones Calumet. Her mother wanted to reclaim the name of a terrifying virus affecting unborn children – change it to something beautiful. I started to write about two strangers, single parents maybe, or maybe not single, who meet at their children’s Halloween parade – those squiggly lines of ill fitting costumes, the boy with the pirate eye patch who keeps pulling it up so he can see, the three princesses in blue, the doctor in her oversized white coat.
I can’t pursue all of those things, and so I list them out knowing if I’m lucky, I might pursue one of them. I’ve lost focus a few different times. I thought about exercising, learning how to clip the dog’s nails, getting groceries, going to a bar later for dinner, going to a coffee shop to read (and look the part of the lonely writer). I got up and heated some cider – looked at the browning bananas and remembered I was going to make banana bread. Suddenly I felt the hopelessness of fading time – I can’t fit half of these things in. The distractions are a form of resignation. I want to book a trip, maybe two. I return to reading at the end of the sofa, cider mug warming my hand. The text conversation was with a woman I’ve never met. She lives in a town near where I used to live. She owns a house in Vermont, skies in Vail and Breck (shortened the way people who count it among their many playgrounds do). Her neighbors are famous and in the news. This too is a story bubbling up. She only dates skiers – it’s a lifestyle. I am not a skier. I can’t afford a “lifestyle.” I want to suggest that I could sip whisky by the fire at the chalet – give cozy turtleneck and sweater hugs when she and her friends return. The phrase boy-toy crosses my mind a few times – a less rugged version of Hemingway – Ernest as a kept man.
Where has the morning gone. I’m already cancelling parts of my day. The book, open and face down where I left off, nags me to read a bit more. The journal under it where the poem about cancer sits disjointed and unfinished nags me in a different way – too complex to get it right. It’s raining now, the morning is a muddy puddle on the gravel drive. The dog is curled against my hip and snoring. I don’t know what to do other than sort through the tangle… pull at the threads of my many knotted desires – see if something unfurls.