The Whale Belly

Today I assembled syringes for seven hours in a tent in the parking lot of the Alamodome. Now my brain is a squid in a stryofoam cup, left in the car all day. The last thing I want to do is write, but I suppose I have to.

I worked next to a nice lady. She told me she went on lots of trips around the world because her husband attends lots of real estate conferences. While he works she goes on tours in whatever city they’re in. She asked me what I do and I told her “I write some, and I teach a bit.” And when she pressed me further I buried the fact that I haven’t done much at all in the past couple of years, highlighting instead my list of accomplishments before this dry spell. I thought I did pretty well, but then at some point, hours later, she asked me to tell her about the type of things I write, and I had to scramble again. I used the word “existential,” because that signals that whatever the hell you write, it’s significant.

I don’t know what I write, or what I write about. I read a critic who said that all the best writers wrestle with one theme their entire careers. Hemingway was concerned with the gruff acceptance of the ugliness of life, Joyce the moments of epiphany. Who knows if there is any validity in this, but say there is, I wonder how many of these authors are conscious of going back to the same well to drink deeper and cooler waters. Personally I can’t seem to force myself to write anything, so whatever spills out from my finger tips is what I do my best to shape into something neat for others to look at. I’m a kid with shaving cream all over his desk and I just like the feel of the stuff between my fingies.

I’m not waiting for inspiration to strike; that’s not the point. I just keep the fingers moving. It’s the moment when I say I’m going to write this or that story that it all dries up and I’m left hollow-eyed and gasping at the computer screen.

But then again, maybe it’s all about learning to work through these periods of aridity. It’s like the relationship with God that St. John of the Cross describes in Dark Night of the Soul. The hanging of the self to dry until it disintegrates on the line, burned out by the sun. And supposedly that’s when the real fun begins. Then nothing matters. The writing only needs to be true.

It may be the case that I’m no fiction writer at all. Maybe a writer just writes what makes the most sense to him until it takes on a life of his own. He learns to stop hating what he writes and simply lets it emerge, straightens its collar and runs a comb through its hair, then sends it on its merry way.

Faulkner was a firm believer in the Muse. Most writers are, but they give her different names. But Faulkner claimed he never gave any thought to what he wrote, he just sat in a chair and bled. Maybe he was chosen, or maybe he got so good at bleeding that other people said it was art.