NYC is gone. Not a memory of it. Not a trace. Brutally back to work. Long hours. Impossibility of getting what needs to be accomplished done. Then booking nights in the studio and getting to bed after midnight. Waking too early in the morning because that is what you do, what your body and mind do to you who no longer seems to be either body or mind but simply suffering spirit, and making the coffee and watching the world light up, looking out to see all the improvements you made at great expense in disarray, eroding like disappearing money into a primal state, thinking of all you planned to do that needs to be done and that you want to do but knowing you haven't time to do them. The Old Grind. Others seem to have more time and money. Their improvements last in a way mine never seem to do. Their houses and lawns are made of sharp, curving lines and deep colors while mine begins to look like a child's drawing left out in the weather. What am I doing wrong, I wonder? But the answer only comes to me in fragments. I try to do what I should, try to put things back when I finish with them, try to wipe up counters and run the dishwasher, but there are gremlins all about, for when I come home, I see the disarray. I've hurt my back so brutally that I cannot put my pants on without leaning and stretching an arm until it dislocates so as not to bend. And pain makes you tired. Pain makes you sweat. I need water, I say to myself as I pour another whiskey. This will do me no good, I say. I need water in my veins, water in my joints. The next version, to paraphrase one musician, will run on water. But not tonight. My body vibrates with pain and fatigue and desperation and something else, too; still, I have no time to just rest. Home so late and up so early and so much to do today and no reinforcements coming to the rescue. And still. . . I am making Devil's deals for things that are not practical, that will only drag me deeper into the ditch.
But hey. . . you may have heard that one before.
"Their houses and lawns are made of sharp, curving lines and deep colors while mine begins to look like a child's drawing left out in the weather."
ReplyDeleteBrilliant.
Yes, it is my preferred way of writing.
ReplyDelete