I Write

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and my stomach churns. I have the impression of hunger but know that’s false; it’s something else, some sort of concern demanding my attention, something vaguely physical/emotional. Bell’s Palsy is still kicking, I’m worried about finances, my furnace and air conditioning system are on their last leg…

There are options.

I can get up and write, as I’m doing now. Sometimes it helps. Since writing is on my daily list of Things to Do, I at least get the satisfaction of crossing one item out and moving to the next one.

I can try to figure out what’s going on. This is generally fruitless.  Even in the smallest of lives events supersede each other and trying to find and follow one strand, one issue, is at best frustrating. Plus, as they say, my head is a bad neighborhood and going there alone is unwise.

I can read. That’s the safest route, but it makes me feel wimpy. Why should I have to involve myself in another’s fantasy to rid myself of my own dark ones? But I know how to get around this—I find a book I’ve read and reread, an old friend, and I open it at random. Any of Updike’s Rabbit works, or something by Earl Thompson, Vance Bourjaili, Mauriac (reading in French helps.)

I fall asleep, wake a few hours later feeling the same zoo of sensations. It’s still dark outside. The cat’s head is inches from mine and wants to be fed. I sit up, say the serenity prayer a few times, wait for something to happen but nothing does. I write some more.

After a while the sun begins to rise. I hear the thud of the newspaper thrown on my driveway. There are birds, noisy, raucous, it’s mating season and we’re in an avian frenzy.

The list of Things to Do today grows, small stuff, mostly. I need coffee. I make some; go back downstairs to my home office.

I write.