The Breakup - Part I

You can’t break up with me, because I’m breaking up with you.

You never really gave this a chance.

Sing my praises, harlot, or I will wring your neck.

Now bow down before me.

Practicing strong words, singing a bit, and scaring the bejesus out of some perfectly innocent birds along the way, I rode my bicycle down the narrow, carved lane, bellowing to the sky. I was searching for the perfect response. I was dredging my soul for the ultimate comeback, which always seemed to come too late. Nineteen years, three months, and two days and you’d think I could come up with something on the spot. But no, I had nothing when it mattered. I had slack jaw, filling eyes, shaking hands, and dry tongue. I had squat. So I beat the tar out of myself on the long road to the beach, hands still shaking and eyes still swimming. What a specimen.

My hand hurt from punching a tree. Poor scrub pine. My head hurt from digging so deep, scraping the sides, and coming up empty. And my heart, most of all my heart, ached like it had never ached before. That girl, that bitch to whom I had gladly turned all my attention and affection for the past six months, had dumped me like yesterday’s potato salad. And we had spoken of a life beyond. We had shared our deepest darkest secrets, which included being together for the foreseeable future in a tiny apartment in the city. We had dreamt together of cohabitational bliss and sweaty sex and pounding hearts and tiny kitchen space. Most of all, we had promised together, made the commitment together, shared the air and breathed and kissed and sweated. And now this.

When I arrived at my parents’ home after work – all summer I had proudly rented small boats with Johnson 20hp motors that Greeks from Montreal used for fishing for tiny scup (picture trash bags full of fish), rented fishing gear, and sold nasty sea worms for bait – I was greeted by Sasha, my sweet Sasha.

“Where’re my folks?” I remember asking.

“Out,” she answered, “Beer?”

She smiled and handed me a beer as I removed my boots and placed them neatly inside the cellar door. As I closed the door and raised the bottle to my lips, I stopped mid-sip. I saw the vacant look in her eyes. Her eyes were the color of ashes and now I knew why. The fire had gone out. I had loved those cold, gray eyes. But now I feared them. I feared what lay behind them. I could sense the end like a bullfighter preparing for the final thrust. Only this time I was the bull.

She raised her sword. I steeled myself, my hands curling into fists and my back tightening in anticipation of the plunge. She smiled. I smiled. She took a sip of her tea. I took a sip of my beer and placed the bottle on the kitchen table with a shaking hand. She sensed my fear, my knowledge of what was to come, and opened her mouth.

“So, how was work?”

What? How was work? This is the crashing finale? What the hell is this?

“Fine.” Fine, yeah. It was fucking great. The fucking Greeks turned the inside of a 16-foot boat into a frying pan coated with the remains of a failed seafood omelet. They had let the squid, which they used for bait to catch their precious scup, bake onto the sides and harden. I spent two hours hosing and scraping that boat. Sons of bitches. It was a fine day.

“I’m leaving you.”

Bang! There it was! There was the plunge, just as I was somewhat enjoying the fact that she had asked the wrong question and I was getting off the hook. She asked it, I recalled the day’s fiasco, and now I was backpedalling into the ropes. And she threw the haymaker. I caught that thing right on the jaw, no protection. I reeled. I caught myself. I responded.

“Huh?” I said. Wow. Retort of retorts. Nice comeback, Potsy. Failure at an unprecedented level. “You’re shitting me,” I added. Clever.

“No, I’m not. Look, we both know this hasn’t really been working for quite a while. I think it’s time to cut our losses and move on.” Kapow. Bang. Ziff. Thud.

So that was that. The great breakup of 1979. And now here I was thundering down Cowlick Road with tears in my eyes and swollen knuckles trying to come up with a better comeback. Talk about a waste of time…

~~~~~~~~

'til next time...

The Write Stuff

Write! Right? It's easy! Just sit down and let it flow! Pour out the strings and streams of words from that bag of mush you call a brain onto the paper or into the computer and get it done! Well, it isn't so easy. Your mind can trick you. Your life, aka the things you do to keep yourself busy, can overtake you.

I have been fooled repeatedly by my own psyche. I work diligently day after day, feeling good about writing and the process, which then flows into the rest of my life in nothing but positive ways. Then, without warning, I am sidetracked. I’ve never experienced the proverbial writer’s block, knock wood, but I have been (seemingly) interminably sidetracked. Distracted. Waylaid. Or, as Maud Lebowski says, “taken for the proverbial ride.” And the culprit, my mind. My silly, jammed-with-20th-century-pop-culture mind. Cannot and will not blame anyone or anything else. That’s too easy. It’s this bundle of synapses in my skull that keeps me from what I want to do, love to do, and strive to do.

That in and of itself is so strange to me. How can it be that we have the desire, the craving, the knowledge that it is good for us in every way, and yet we still don’t get it done? Answer? I have no idea. I just shrug my shoulders, put on my best California-roll-with-it-dude attitude, and get on with it.

I’ve read about tons of remedies. My favorites are: setting an alarm on your desktop so that you are prodded into doing the work; making your workspace a friendly, welcoming place where you would want to sit down for hours and type away; setting a schedule and doing a little bit every day until you gain some momentum. These and many more are all great ideas and more than likely offer each and every writer a respite from their troubles. I’ve tried most of them.

For me, it’s the schedule that works. I force myself out of bed at an ungodly hour every morning, make coffee, do other menial chores like take out the trash or recyclables, if necessary, and then sit down and ace the words. What gets me going in the beginning is rehashing and editing things I’ve already written. Let’s say I’m working on a new novel – okay, I am – and I need to get back into it. My mind has taken a vacation for a few months and I’m tired of feeling guilty about not revisiting and completing this work. Diving back into editing what is already down reminds me that I can, in fact, do it. It puts my mind in the same place it was during that productive period. It re-submerses me into the world I created and demands that I work the words over again and again. In short, getting up early and re-working something I’ve already written is a great way for me to replicate the mindset I need to want to continue on with the story or the structure or whatever the project is I’m working on.

But this obviously would be different if I were starting something new, or I should say having trouble starting something new. How would I be able to edit what’s there when there is nothing there? I’ve run into this as well. My solution is to pick up something old, something unfinished (come on, we all have them, those pieces that never quite reached fruition or were tossed by the wayside for any one of myriad reasons), and begin reworking it. This has the same effect for me. It shoves my head below the surface of that murky pond and forces me to re-enter that world, re-work it, polish it, whatever, and fight for air. Even if I don’t continue with that particular piece – after all, there was probably a good reason it was tossed aside to begin with – at least I forced myself into the writing (the right) mindset.
So, just write. Right? It’s easy! Or, at the very least, it’s easier than we’ve convinced ourselves it is…

Til next time.