Well, Letter #3 is on hold for a bit. Not so much writer’s block as much as writer’s hemorrhaging. Lot to say, just not a lot of energy last night to write it. I thought I’d have a Sprite/Vodka nightcap, and well, it capped off my night by sending me into a coma. Man, I’m a cheap date.
I should have threatened to quit months ago; traffic’s been through the roof since I announced my semi-retirement. I’ve also poured about 12,000 words into the site in the 10 days since, so it’s been a horribly executed break on my part. No matter. I’m actually enjoying the site again, which I wasn’t for a while.
Which was silly, really. I mean, it’s mine. I best enjoy it. You don’t keep listening to a record you hate, after all. You toss it out, give it away, or use it for skeet shooting practice, all John Entwistle-like. Even worse, in this case I made the damn record. I should like what’s on it.
It’s odd, looking at the site via the monthly pages. More of an autobiography than I thought it would be. Not necessarily for what I wrote about, but what I wasn’t writing about. A lot of that is coming out now. At the time, I strove only to be funny, and well, I can’t always be funny. I can, on the other hand, always bring the party down a notch, and thus the massive output here lately.
Gotten a few emails or comments asking if this week’s exercise has been cathartic. I’m not sure “cathartic” is the right word; would imply, at least to me, that the emotions evoked were somehow fresher, or newer, I guess. I mean, yes, every once in a while something opens an emotional veil, and poof, here I go, again on my own, sans Tawny Kitaen, which, as Whitesnake taught us, is the only redeeming feature of going again on my own. But if she’s there, am I really alone? Is she an existential ho? But I digress.
It’s been worthwhile, if not cathartic. Like I said earlier this week: it’s not about laying things to rest, it’s about how to incorporate them somehow into the everyday. I wish I had my copy of “High Fidelity” with me, since there’s this great quote in it about how everything we do, everyone we meet, writes the one and only story of our lives. Yes, things could only have happened one way, because they only happened one way. You could have zigged instead of zagged, but you didn’t. There’s no cosmic reason you didn’t, it just happened that way. You just didn’t zag. But Lucy wrote my relationship with Tina, and I wrote her eventual marriage to Sam, and their engagement sparked the chapter of Sally, and so forth. It'd be easy to blame Fate for the stupid things I've done in the past, but it's just misplaced blame. Fate was at a kegger when I was doing some of those asinine things, and mildly bemused watching me stumble during others. But it never made me do a damn thing.
I am the sum of all that life-writing, and occasionally, I can transcribe the events as I see them. I never see them completely, but occasionally they are a little less blurry. Must have gotten better eyeglass prescription or something lately. This week’s letter-writing is not an attempt to finally come to grips with these past events so much as contextualize them within the life that is now mine. I’m a different person than 6 months ago, and still different from the person 3 months ago, even. Was time to take stock, that’s all. I’m not alone in that endeavor, which is why I think in some cases the writing hit home for some readers.
And that’s the greatest benefit of all. Back in college, the modus operandi for purgation lay in sad-bastard poetry written on a MAC Performa 575 that was never meant for human consumption. Now, I can take the small step of hubris and assume that this exercise benefited a few others, besides myself. And that’s pretty cool. It’s the only reason I write, and every once in a while, things work out as I want them too. (And every once in a while I see a movie featuring Eva Mendes in a ridiculously form-fitting black t-shirt and life's pretty sweet then, too, but that's another tale for another day.)
For now, though, baby steps.
One more letter.
Then more baby steps.
(Tim, no Ator quotes.)