February 6, 2014

Where am I?

I hate writing stories. I have all of these great ideas for books and I just can't get it to flow the way I want. I can write about ideas and tangents all day. Hell, I even have. But starting a story with characters and moving them along a story line? It's like I'm broken. A writer who can't write a story. God it even sounds sad. I hate you. Hate. Ugh. Stupid computer. I'm supposed to be writing a book and I can barely start, and have no where to go. Post apocalyptic zombie hunter? Lost after 2 pages. Girl living on her wits in the woods? Hell I didn't even get a chance to introduce the character, I bored myself too fast. Now with half of a provocation I can read a bitch to filth from the top of her skank-face to the bottom of her gnarly ass hooves. For days... yes. Tell a story not based in truth, to just pull something magical out of my ass? MMMM not gonna happen. I spent years hearing about my potential, how I could do all of these magical and wonderful things with my life. I pissed a bunch of it away, between anger about my childhood and trying to survive. Drinking, drugs, late nights and the search for love all contributed to where I am. Where am I? That's a good question. Ground control to major Thom, you've really made the grade. Or something. Am I where I am in my dreams, sipping coffee next to an open window in Paris? Working a loom, making my art? Am I performing onstage in front of a sold out crowd? Or am I living in a trailer? One of hundreds of trailers, hallways with doors that only go one way. Is my life tripping over a black dog in the dark, hoping to find a bathroom? Hearing the cries of a small child, wondering whose baby that is and realizing it was mine? Where am I really? I sometimes feel like I live in an ethereal plane, halfway between this world and another. Another world, somewhat of my own design but there are things there, things not of any real world. Beyond human comprehension are these …creatures and feelings. Colors that do not exist here, melding and bleeding with plants and animals far beyond a surrealist painting. Perhaps I'm in the quiet forest of my youth, walking quietly so as to observe all that exists around me. Beauty and life breathing, quickening, all around me. Then the blare of an alarm clock screaming through my brain. I sit up, awake next to a man. I have pets to feed, a child to ready for school. Is this where I am? I turn on the coffee pot, light a cigarette. I look around. This is not seemingly Paris, this place of noises and needs. Birds, dog, cat, child, all with their morning noises. The man sleeps. What am I doing? How did I get in this place? As the coffee filters through my synopsis, the fog clears and I remember exactly how this place manifested itself. Be careful what you wish for, it won't end up the way you think. I wished for more time to work on my art and time to spend with my son. I ended up with a disease that makes it so I can't work, or really do anything but sleep and cry about half of the time. I should have wished to be independently wealthy. Being sick doesn’t pay the bills in this country. In fact, not much other than working for a corporation does around here. Corporations think for some reason that you should be reliable and able to show up and function when they schedule you, and that really isn't possible for me. So I'm a housewifeish for a man. The bills don't get paid on time or sometimes at all because restaurant work has fluctuating hours but there’s almost no makeup for it. Companies lie and promise promotions and raises but they don't follow through. You can threaten to quit, but they don't care. There's another person right behind you desperate to feed their family, they'll work for cheaper than you will. Who cares about the workers anymore? Not the people making the money, that's for sure. We've become a nation of faceless drones, statues. A representation of people is what we've become. There are so many of us. So many people in this world with nothing they can do. I want to move somewhere with a village. A village market where I can sell blankets and food I grow. Perhaps we wouldn't have much, but there wouldn't be so much pressure all of the time.