Staving Off the Blues

I almost wished the rain had kept up. I would have put a log on the fire and been grateful to get in from out of the cold and wet. Instead, it's just another night. The roads don't smell that rainsoaked way. And I carried my umbrella for nothing. Just flash flood advisories and puddling up in the gutters. But no real excuse for feeling the grey and the cold in the deep parts of your person. I felt better in some ways today. Not quite as deteriorated from the crippling work schedule and the sleep deprivation and the continuing allergic epic. But not quite halycon. And also somehow paralyzed and unable to shake the desire to go somewhere far away and never come back.

I sometimes liken the disquiet of the creative spirit to the prodding of demanding ghosts. Whispers that keep me from being happy with things. That keep me from ever being done. It's like the work keeps me from disappearing, and I'm afraid of it ever actually ending. I will always be the girl with the painting that was never finished. The poem with only one stanza completed. The manuscript with nothing but a title and a list of character names. There's a scene in Tampopo wherein the mother of this family is dying, and her husband is rushing home to be there because he knows there isn't much time. He sees her succumbing and he yells at her to get up and cook the dinner. So she mutely rises from her bed and begins to make fried rice. And once she has served her husband and children, she dies. It's like that. I'm just playing it so I've always got that one last meal to cook. And it's very likely that it would be fried rice.