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Imagine Kenneth Branagh With a Sword

Most of the last mornings as I’ve sat down to write I’ve wanted to describe what I want to write rather than write what I want to write.  This week’s experience isn’t a virgin one.

Intially, and right up to the moment I crafted the first sentence above, I’ve worked to tamp this feeling down.  I drive the desire from my mind and finger tips.  I label it unproductive and and the spawn of my fears.  Laying out what I want to write, telling you what I’m going to tell you, explaining my intentions prior to composing those intentions feels like failure.

Allow me to justify them anyway by talking about hunger.  Every Lent since my Freshman year in college I’ve fasted for the first three days.  No one told me too.  I’m not starving myself because of my poor body image.  I’m not even sure it’s really on the official list of options for the first three days of Lent in Rome.  It’s just something that I wanted to try and that particular spiritual season over twenty years ago seemed like a good enough excuse.  I’ll not go into the details, I’ll only say that day one you can’t think about anything but eating, day two you’re mostly caosting and amazed at the extra time on your hands, and day three is marked by lethargy and bargaining.  It’s day three that applies here.

Writing about writing instead of writing the writing loses the bargain.  It caves to the pressure wanting to write but not wanting to work.  It asks, “Haven’t you written enough?  Isn’t it time for a little break?”  It pleads, “No creativity today.  No fresh story.  No new voice.  No device. No. No. No.”  But all that asking, all the pleading, all the bargaining resides in the same head as the will to do the work the right way.

Maybe this is a justification.  Maybe the louder lazy voice wore me down.  I’ll not deny that voice any longer, but I will reign it.  I will guide it.  I will bend it.  From now on when I want to dodge I’m going to make it productive.  I’ll turn the effort into an outline or I’ll hold myself to the outcome I’ve described.

Bleh.  Good thing I wasn’t going for a St. Crispan’s Day speech.

Day 277

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Your Impatience; Your Life.

A miniskid slides up to your boots.  You toss on your duffel and guitar kit and go back to rummaging around the passenger’s side floorboards to find the second of two dead batts you tossed there.  Perhaps you’re having trouble finding either of the batts because you’re thinking more about the security for the data-paq you’re couriering: obscurity, stealth, subterfuge, or strong-arm?  Or maybe it’s all the food wrappers, the rank and stale sports-bra, and the books getting in your way.

:Yes, there’s one!:

Normally you’d do the obscurity thing without a further thought.  It suits your personality and your wallet, but you’re thinking it over anyway.  Stealth’s too blown from your ride in.  Can’t motor in on a bitchin’ flit like this custom B’bridge and not expect people to notice.  You’re too frazzed after the long jump from [planet name here] to bother with the acting that goes along with subterfuge though you could go for some man burning sex-play.  Can’t have too many of those notches.  Maybe you’ll fit some of that in anyway.  That leaves armed guards and an impromptu parade through the core of Okkatu.  And endless waiting.

:Screw it.  Not waiting.  Not after that ride.:

You remove the data-paq from the skid’s safe and stuff it into a day bag with your floorboard trash and laundry.

:There’s the other batt.:

I thought I’d not yet written your deboarding in the hanger, but apparently I had.  Maybe I can slot this bit in before that one.

Day 276

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The Glyphs of Sedge Street

Charlie Crider enjoyed reading the subtleties of every ship he boarded so he expected the boatswain’s whistle before he saw it.

I was going somewhere with this a week or so ago.

Day 274

Sedge Street is the the oldest, longest, widest, and straightest street in [city].  Sedge remains the most obvious, but not only, symbol of an ancient time.  The historians told the architects who told me there was no reason for its length, no reason other than the seduction of space and the greed to consume it.  I think maybe the builders and craftsmen who constructed the first shops and stables along SSN wanted to market their wares in a primary spot—not one wanting to be even a convenient step or two off the main way.  Everyone wanted to be first so they lined up next to each other like children neatly arranging blocks for counting.

The width they know with a certainty to derive from the need to turn a horse team around on itself to exit town after dropping off goods.  The side streets have always been barely more than cart paths.

Its straightness is a cartographers joke or mistake.  The original planners listed shops, dwellings, liveries, stables, government buildings, and the like on a scroll of butcher’s paper.  Next to each entry, like a bulleted list, lay a large square.

Eesh, gonna have to let this idea simmer down in my head before I proceed.  Guess my week off left my brains weak and flabby.

Three corners of that square hold a number: upper left for the order of construction, upper right for the family, lower left for the type of building.  Each of these three is conspicuously indicated on the scroll in a legend or note.  The fourth corner, the lower right corner, holds a glyph.

Day 275