daze in the life

The house is filled with papers. Endless stacks of papers, lined up in rows, in rubbermaid containers, stacked up against the walls, beneath tables, serving as footrests and becoming furniture. The epicenter was perhaps in the computer room, whose walls are lined with towering Pizas of paper, threatening to crumble and drifting down occasionally in disorder on the floor. It must be organized somewhere, in someone’s mind. In the mind of the collector, who endlessly collects for the sake of collecting. But there is a melancholy to the space, an air of the unfinished in the closed-up smell of it all. The air of something great whose greatness lies in the unending preparation, and never the resolution, culmination, creation of anything. Most works of greatness end up like this perhaps – lining the livingroom walls of an anonymous housewife who feeds the neighborhood cats. She has collected for so long that collecting is itself an end, the aim long lost in the routine of preparation. It is the habit of hope that keeps her going, spending forgotten hours in the unindexed and dusty file cabinets of small-town libraries. There must be greatness in all that paper, in all that tremendous amount of work creeping its way along the walls, growing up the beams and mulching the carpet. The work overtakes the house, overtakes the woman, who becomes only a subset of its massive existence. But it isn’t great, and it’s the extent and volume of the work that makes it even more distressing.

The age and heaviness that that house holds, returning into its own dust, penetrates the air, moves through the vents that lead into a bottomless basement. She becomes defensive if you ask her about it. She never shows anyone her work. Sometimes envelopes arrive, from no one we know, and she doesn’t let anyone see them. They say no, again. She rips up her entire manuscript, starts from scratch. The endless process. Once she is published. She’s the foremost expert in the field, knows more than all the academics and has read everything from the moldy pages on which they are written in strange cursive. But no one knows. Only she knows, and it swims around in her head and makes it down on paper in bits and pieces that are never finished -- like the house, undone. Without furniture. Only an armchair full of box springs and the antennae of the television. The dining table saw better card games than dinners, the house smells like cats. It’s strange, the kind you wonder what strange people live in. A Halloween house no one asks for candy at. It’s like a pack of mice have nested here, made their home by tearing out the stuffing and using the drapes for linen. The wood has nicks, although you can see it must have looked nice once. The house settles. The papers sit. And nobody cares. No one will ever know how countless hours were spent. It will all die and crumble. Greatness will never be achieved, and it doesn’t matter, at all. That’s the saddest part of it. No one will mourn the unborn work, someone will throw it away and the garbage dump will be the wiser.

like in a wave,
i let myself go limp
directions will wash through me, become part of my soul
i have only to let them deposit me where they will, on the other side of compliance
and hope one day to wash their imprint from my hair

Day One in the life of a writer. Wake up too late to get an early start. Head to the library to use the Internet. Library doesn't open til 12 (I get there at 11). Read outside the library while ants crawl into my bra and I notice my elbow is squishing a piece of rabbit poo. Am impressed library’s wildlife-friendly landscaping. Do yoga while I wait for the library doors to open so as not to look as rabid as everyone else to get inside. There is a collective sigh as the doors open; I expect to hear whistles and scattered clapping, but no, business as usual. Except, announces a librarian as we file in, the Internet is down. Spend another hour researching markets in my Writer’s Market 2004, newly purchased, half of my writerly expenditures for this month. Conclude that it doesn’t include most of the markets I want to write for, although I guess it was worth the thirty bucks for the pithy and engaging article on how to be pithy and engaging (and published). Look again for Playboy in library collections. Still not there. Content myself with Ms., but decide it’s too sophisticated to publish any of my writing. Go home for lunch, tuna fish and a Balance bar, while I read in the Glamour diet section how protein bars are full of preservatives and other unfortunate additives, and only to be consumed in the utmost necessity (laziness counts, I decide). Talk to my roommate about boy troubles, telling myself I should work on my article (or something). By 3:30 the Internet is back up. I drive back to the library, wishing I had a bike, then change my mind because I get sweaty enough in the car on the way over. Find the last slightly shady spot so my surfboard, which I’m too lazy to take out of my car, doesn’t melt or turn yellow, or anything else unpleasing. Print out writer’s guidelines for the two magazines I have determined as potential candidates for my wit and wisdom. Buy a copy of one magazine, Bitch, while alternately leaning on the cover so no one can see it and casting hostile, feminist stares at random passers-by. Wonder if holding this magazine makes my arms look butch and my lack of makeup a political statement. Tell myself not to care what anyone thinks. Turn the cover inward (not before checking to make sure it doesn’t have a dildo add on the back) and walk out, thinking about whether I have the guts to do anything other than what I’m told to. Lock eyes with the waiter talking a break outside the trendy new Asian restaurant, playing Avril Lavigne, Michelle Branch, somebody. Thought he was intense and darkly mysterious, realize he’s a teenager. Moving along. Return home. Decide exercise will help put my thoughts in order. Decide not to spend any extra money on unnecessary things, especially chocolate. Take a marvelous run in the Back Bay. Notice halfway through I’m halfway through and haven’t noticed anything. Proceed to dwell in my own thoughts. Optimism about my article alternates with musing on why my relationship with my boyfriend works. Actually it takes up most of my thoughts, because I can’t think of a damn reason why. Which leads me to wonder if I haven’t noticed it doesn’t work. It must be because he needs someone to nurture him and I can’t stand to lose an ongoing bet with myself that he doesn’t really like me. Decide I’m thinking too hard. It’s because we enjoy each other’s company. (I tell him later. He demurs, hurting my feelings. I think he was joking. Tell him it’s not funny, moving along). Mean to start work but get sidetracked by a blue-cheese hamburger. Go with roommate and her boyfriend to on-strike supermarket to get ice cream (thankfully strikers are too tired to be anything but nice by now). I justify this as a necessary (as opposed to frivolous and sweet-tooth-driven) expenditure because I now feel guilty for eating my roommate’s food when I know she is broke. Ice cream is eaten too quickly. Now I have to ‘work.’ Read and highlight writer’s guidelines. Put stars next to important points. Read my copy of Bitch and wonder, again, why it has to be so bitchy. Realize my Women’s Studies 101 understanding of feminism is vastly lacking and that I am a victim of mainstream hegemonic patriarchal society (does everything have to part of the worldwide conspiracy to keep women down? Concede they may have a point, but only because to do otherwise would be conceding to mainstream hegemonic patriarchal society's worldwide conspiracy to keep women down). Learn two new words (will look up later, having forgot context). Talk to boyfriend, for five minutes more than the five minutes expected. The puppy is running around the pool. He’s being hilarious, wish you could be here to see it. Hear myself whine when he says he has to go. Feeling peevish, I remind him that he hasn’t asked about my day. He disagrees. I don’t tell him ‘how’s it going’ doesn’t count as asking about my day. Proceed to give him the executive summary of my day. Manage to take away ten more minutes of his time. Victory. Our conversation is intermittently interspersed around discussion of the dog’s latest antics. Hang up. Wonder whether I have to capitulate to the market or whether the editor of Vogue will find my phone number. Notice my contacts are getting fuzzy. Realize it’s too late to get an early start tomorrow. Time for bed.

no time read, only glance
moments too soon gone
interruptions noise, commercial color, plastic
singsong, hum,
living boxes (computer, cubicle, apartment)
barebones of breathing, efficient, automatic
more energy work
same wake tired eyes day food home TV sleep
wake gray sunny maybe chit-chat

second hand moves i sit still