Whenever there is a seemingly lot to do, this Dar Williams song finds itself in my head. Of course what the character in "The Great Unknown" is trying to do in the song is much more important that anything I have to do...
(get plane tickets to California, get plane tickets for Canada, find money somewhere for said plane tickets, sign a contract or not, read scenes, clean house, put together packages, go back to poems, go on with novel, return a million missives, plan Tuesday's classes and Thursday's)
...but I think it's the furtiveness of it, the feeling like: whatever you have to do is against dismantling, whether it's fixing the broken lightpost, or putting together the ingredients for bread, or straightening the lines of a poem. Decay and disorder are their natural state.
So decisions bring the lyrics back.
You think I am being disruptive?
But no I'm running home, I'm running,
'Cause I'm trying to put the atom back together.
...I'm just trying to put the atom back together.
It seems that we do in writing is really just make decisions. Sometimes the characters make them themselves. Sometimes they're bad decisions--going down in the basement, driving all night to him--but they're decisions.
Something gets done. Then--as a friend described revising poems--the whole house falls down around you again.
Today is a velvet pants day! Due to professional and weather restrictions--a rarity. Also, spellcheck thought to replace lightpost with lightface. Interesting. Man-moth.
