"The night was hot, it was wet, it was... humid, that's humid!" 

"The night was sultry!"
--'Throw Momma From The Train'


Infrequently certainly means infrequently...

All night long, well almost all night long, I've been staring at the screen, staring at my hands. I'm alive. I'm dead... filling the whitespace... and doing nothing original at all. Every line is quickly deleted and begun anew, recrafted and retrofitted, then cast off and retooled, tried at a different angle and discarded, cast upon the trash heap of my harddrive. Filling the big white nothing in front of me is painful at times, boring at others, occasionally it's a Zen moment when nothing on the screen means I've already accomplished what I set out to do.

Then I drift off again... because it’s late in Hotel, CA. and the lights are low, the blues are softly playing in the background, and Sanctuary is quiet, and so I drift and dream about a dream that could have been reality.

Last night I was lectured, sternly and lovingly, about being a writer, or at least getting back to words somehow. Since the conversation took place in the most dreamilistic reality I've ever encountered, I'm suspicious of whether it might have been me talking to myself. 'Course I'm usually not naked out of doors at one hour to midnight, and I'm not an incredibly lovely woman either. Stern lectures on being creative at all cost usually come from my mother... but this one came after a fit of post-pseudo-coital affection, mirth, and apologies a-plenty with this loveliest of women who wasn't my mother. Creativity does have a cost, of course. The beautiful muse, naked on concrete, pointed this fact out repeatedly, not yet sternly because I'd only started in on a fifth of the excuses I usually hurl out in these kind of conversations, but soon enough the give and take of conversation ended and all I could do was listen and take in her strident voice, lovely, full of love yet slightly scathing as she gave her lecture and advice. It was all done sweetly, a lecture nevertheless, but definitely one I needed to hear. Maybe it was a dream at that. Some wine, some lightening and thunder, a fall into mud and the next thing I know the evening is a riot of car chases, discarded clothing, a fumbled attempt at fornication, and a botched defense of some bright enlightenment on a subject so dear to my heart-- two subjects actually --myself and my lapsed creativity (due to pure laziness, self-doubt and contentment in a desk job).

The whitespace of the Word page (unfilled by words themselves, it's the page is beneath this blog... the page I ignore) attacks my field of view like a great shark taunting me that I'm gonna need a bigger boat... chum the water, feed the kitty, pay some dues and fill the whitespace. Maybe something will come of it yet. Maybe. But, I scold myself (for here I am... alone and tired) just don't sit there dreaming of the evening prior, and don't just sit thinking of the vast page waiting to be filled, do something with nothing, start throwing the words around and get to work, and feel some discontentment for a change... feel challenged, creative, and constructive. The internal lecture over... I venture forth to do battle with nothing and everything, cut from the same cloth of whitespace.

Xian