Talking myself into it

When January does clear and frosty days, I think there is no better time of year. The light, what few hours we have of it in the North, seems to possess a clarity unlike any other time of year. And with the month getting older and the books I had hoped to have begun by now still unwritten, I took myself off for a long walk through the woods and down to the sea. I walked for hours, lunching on a handful of nuts and dried fruit, drinking a bottle of icy water, taking the occasional diary-photo on my phone, but mainly walking and failing utterly to still the ceaseless chatter inside my head.

Lordy, but I do go on. I would be booted out of any self-respecting monastery for crimes against meditation were I ever to join an order. My 'internal dialogue' is an internal wordsalad on steroids ramped up to an earsplitting volume by way of a Marshall stack. Somebody shut me up. Turn it down, wouldya?

I'm praying* it's entirely because I'm in the predromal phase of the socially-acceptable psychosis that is the precursor to going all-out fruit loops and gobbing out a book. But you know, I could be wrong. I could just be on the threshold of lunacy. Wouldn't be the first time. Uh huh. AWOOOOOOOOO. When is the next full moon anyway? Why are you backing away? Aw, c'mon. Stick around. It might be entertaining. It might be enlightening. It might even be unforgettable.

I can promise you one thing, schweethoit. It sure as hell won't be quiet.

*But, you know, not like a monk, yeah? More like a kind of Pentecostal holy-roller type with a bit of swaying and speaking in tongues. And fur. Sort of grey fur. And yellow eyes and pointy ears. Know what I'm saying? AWOOOOOOOOOOO?

sparkly new thing

I'm ready. I've been good. Over the holidays, I didn't fill my temple with assorted burnt offerings, I didn't stay up late knocking back vatloads of fermented grapes and grains ( too headache-inducing, alas) I played my fiddle lots, read three brilliant non-fiction books made out of paper and went for walks in woods and on beaches and didn't throw out any leftovers.

So. Today I tidied the studio. Well, insofar as I ever tidy. I paid bills and filed things but ignored the floor that hasn't been mopped for, pfffff, going on eleven years. Replied to emails that had to be replied to. Changed onto new diary. Shredded things. Put other things in envelopes and crossed things off lists.

I'm ready now. I have a clear window of opportunity in my diary. I'm going to take myself out for walks. I'm going to take photos. I'm going to make sketches. I'm going to go to the library. I'm going to play my fiddle in the hopes of coaxing some ideas out of hiding by pretending to be doing something else entirely. I'm going to go for more walks. I'm going to write. I'm going to throw what I write in the bin. I'm going to go for even more walks. Play even more tunes. Faster. I'm going to write more binworthy stuff. I'm going to draw. Badly. I'm going to feel The Fear. I'm going to gnaw the end of my pen and wonder if I've lost it.*

I'm going to eye the bottles of single malt, lined up like dark green solace in the drinks cupboard, but then I'll remember that these days even the faintest whiff starts the siren-song of migraines. Instead, I'm going to seriously consider cleaning the u-bend, but then I'm going to get real. Ewwwwwwww. Fuggeddit.

I'm going to have a long bath and fall asleep in it and probably let whatever I'm reading** fall into the tepid water. I'm going to do a ton of displacement activities because- guess what- even after all this time, the act of writing, of pulling a story out of thin air still scares the living daylights out of me. But I have to do it. Come what may. Hell and high water and all points in between.

And if I'm very, very lucky, what happened in the picture above will happen inside my head.

A SPARKLY NEW THING will arrive from the place where sparkly new things come from.

Or even a sparkly new thing. Hey. I'm not size-ist. The mere fact of its arrival will be cause enough for celebration.

*My mojo, not my pen.

**Thankfully, not a Knoodle or a Why-pad