Sitting here early Saturday evening,. Have fed the cat fresh meat. Strange noises, desperate backthroat growls from her as she waited while I cut it up. Now she's working her way through the bowl, purring, a few metres away from me.
Smoke fills the air, bush fires, grass fires more specifically. Hot, humid, my T-shirt clings to my back even though I'm doing nothing but sit here. Only my finger muscles being exercised. The just turned on air conditioner runs above the cat's purring. In this small room, the cold spirals, bounces off the wall, somehow comes underneath the keyboard bench to hit my knees.
Heat & humidity. I don't write well in hot weather. Equinox to equinox, with the winter solstice in the middle. That's my time line. & working again doesn't help, even though it's a mundane & non-intellectually-challenging job. My social skills are coming back. But I work best in isolation, unless I'm in the middle of a stimulating & invigorating milieu. I go out & walk the main street at lunchtime, come back with nothing to show except clingfilm-wrapped sandwiches. Maybe I should try the waterfront, come on like an old tenor player, change my first name to Lester.
Not posting to the blog pisses me off. The things that allowed me to do that just aren't happening. Where are the birds? Not posting means that I'm not writing, am not developing the critical mass that is necessary. The postman passes me by. I need discipline, not bondage.
A Leonard Cohen song, Sisters of Mercy, crawls through my brain like a hungry tapeworm. I am not writing. Half-started poems nest in the pc, tapeworm eggs that I shit out everytime I turn the power off. Half-started poems. It's why I'm writing prose, trying to till the field, looking for the grain to plant. Oh, the sisters of mercy. Infamous blue raincoats.
I look for things to placate me. A new issue of
Hamilton Stone Review is out. I have poems in it. Last night the literary magazine of the local university was launched. I have a poem in that, but it is two years' old. I still have things accepted for publication in a few places, other things submitted. I look forward to seeing them up. But, more importantly, I look forward to seeing a poem or two up on the screen in front of me.
But that's the creations of a past that started a second ago. In the here & now I am not writing. I am listening to the air conditioner which has now conditioned the room so I no longer sweat when my fingers engage in this pointless exercise. The cat has gone out to rest in the front garden, satisfied with meat. The blog sits empty.
Rebeka Lembo posted a little while ago that when she doesn't post she doesn't feel right about visiting other people's blogs. I understand now what she means, even though I told her at the time she shouldn't feel that way. But emptiness keeps people away, & if they're that fickle…..
I am not writing. Soon I will go & cook dinner, will eat meat, & then go out & join the cat in the front garden where I will be eaten by mosquitoes. Oh the sisters of mercy. At least something will be making use of my blood.
Send me love notes. I promise I'll reply.
In writing.
