The Time Has Come To Write!
"The time has come to write!" announced the subject line of my email from Technorati.
“Yes sir!” I blurted, snapping to attention.
I am going to follow President Obama’s lead and treat it as a call to action—a timely imperative because I have not written anything of substance for a solid month. If I were to live to be 108, I’d say I’m having a mid-life crisis. If not, it’s a garden-variety existential one. I’m cleaning the litter box of my mind. Sometimes you have to dig to get the shit out. Nothing serious. Just the usual pit of doubt, despair and self-loathing writers fall into.
Actually I had just stopped writing when I received the email, after a weekly practice session at Café Bohème, where a bunch of us gather to feed each other prompt lines we improvise on for 20 minutes without stopping. Sentences such as:
It is like a monstrous out-sized infant left on my doorstep in the middle of the night.
Actually it was a monstrous out-sized infant. It looked strangely like Brad Pitt with a two-day stubble. “All things come to those who wait,” they say. But I certainly hadn’t waited for this. Does this mean I will really someday win the lottery? Now that I’m waiting for. Or one day walk the streets of Tibet owning only the robe I wear? That’s how I see myself in my dotage.
Pardon me, my mind wandered, even with this bawling baby below me. My mind always wanders. That is why I never had nor wanted children. A child needs someone’s full attention, not their attention deficit disorder. I’d be the kind of mother who says, “Mommy has to lie down now.”
Nevertheless I lifted the giant baby monster into my arms and told him, “You’re grotesque, little one. You need someone who’ll love you.” And as soon as I voiced that, I did love him. I closed the door behind us and cooed over him, fed him warm milk, made a place for him in my bed. “You complete me,” I told him. The hours passed.
Continued on the next page
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