The Stuff You Can't See from the Front

A good night for me. Except for the parts when I was awake, I was asleep. That's a common description of a night. I guess I should talk about it as the ratio of the awake time to the asleep time.  I'm guessing it's something like 1:5 or maybe 1:6. Definitely in my favor and that's why I called it a good night. 

Yes, I had strange dreams and as I laid in bed later than usual because I was comfortable. The thoughts got stranger the longer I laid there. Finally, I was forced into an upright position and immediately began to feel better. I don't know how many times I have to learn that lesson before I start getting up when My brain tells me to. 

So I had that recurring thought that I could finish the story. I drag my feet and look for distractions and the story drags on. As it drags, it loses freshness and even meaning. It gradually becomes a hated thing, Something I try even harder to avoid. 

I go back and rewrite older stories, polish them up, which is a good thing. But not when it takes the place of writing on the current story. I liked my routine better when the stories were shorter and it took one or two days at the most to write them. Then another day or two to edit and tadaaa! all done.

This is a longer form but there are so many times when it's not moving ahead. When I skip a day (or two) it feels like all the other abandoned projects I've done. 

It feels like I walked down to the dime store with my $1.75 in hand and went to the model kits in the toy section. I stood there for 40 minutes looking at all the kits of jet planes and cars and maybe a helicopter, trying to decide which one I would buy and assemble. Then I would finally decide and I'd be so excited to get home with it and build it and put the decals on it and maybe put a little paint on it. 

In this case, the model kit I settled on would be a model of Failure. A bizarre twisted assemblage of strange beams and angles, sticking out in every direction with some of those clear plastic pieces which represented glass but which always got fucked up with model glue and fingerprints. There was a hinged section, that you had to be careful with so that none of the glue would get on the parts that were supposed to move, but that I'd always fuck that up.

Before I started I always spread out newspaper to protect the table or floor where I was working and the I'd start laying out the pieces on their plastic frames and looking at the instructions. I'd have such high hopes of success. I'd look at the cool picture on the front of the box. I couldn't stand to wait for things to dry before moving on to the next step and that's part of why the models never turned out. 

In the end, even my model of Failure didn't look like it did on the front of the box. I would have used another entire tube of glue or accidentally squished it out onto the newspaper. It was all over my fingers and all over the plastic parts of the model.   

$1.75 shot to shit. I should have spent it on rubber cigars or Mad Magazines. 

That's the way the forgotten story feels to me. Another familiar failure in a long line of them. Proof to myself that I can't hack the hard stuff. Another reason to find different way to spend my time, one that doesn't require such a commitment of character. I just don't have the minerals to stick around for the finish. 

As if I ever needed the proof.

More later,

(photo by Alex Jodoin)