Here it is. May 21st and I’m writing a bit. Civ 6 has taken the toll of weeks of the births, and some development, of conjured thoughts, cobbled from experience, and put them on hold to either disintegrate or carry the label of this would make a nice couple paragraphs when I write again. Writing again meant not playing the addictive game. So, here I am, weeks later in a life that can envision the end, with no evidence of these ideas.
I’ve all kinds of iterations of Junction. Okay, I’ll just say it. The limitation, perceived based on my condition, indicate that not much big can be accomplished in the remaining years. I think I need a cheerleader. Sandi wants more podcasts. That’s because she likes the music; she doesn’t care that much for my writing. No one does. So, all the you’re a good writer comments I can judge to be you’re better than I am but not so good as to continue. And that muffs my enthusiasm.
Junction. I’m enamored with the concept. The place is real to me, in a story sense. I have to need to explore the place but I’m alone in that. Is this what authors experience? They just trudge on because of some passion to write? Am I up to the lonely task of continuing my exploration of the idea? I don’t know. Sandi is burned out on the place. But, I can’t seem to mentally conjure up another topic, not one as real as the little town in the desert with its quirky and desperate characters.
The truth is, tonight I doubt that the words have any importance beyond satisfying the nagging notion that I should write. Should I? Why? I could relate the pathetically insignificant changes in my life: a new radio in the truck or new speakers in the garage or switching to Comcast from CenturyLink. And these are about as important as changes in the menu of the local greasy spoon. What I need, and shouldn’t, is a “Plastics” comment from some reader. The word in the movie The Graduate that indicated a direction. I have none, neither the spoken incentive nor any sense of direction. Empty. Memories and the phases I consider to be periods of my life. And these whiffs of smoke annotate how little I’ve accomplished and little I matter.
Maybe, just maybe, one of these nights I can step back and intuit what the swirls of vapors mean, the memories and the estimates of my years. Not tonight. Tonight I walk through the clouds of these like an actor stepping through clouds of dry ice.
