Much about nothing....

The door shuts quietly after I've turned on the light.  If i don't turn on the light before the door shuts I'm in total inky blackness.  I'm in my basement.  I can hear the rain up on my roof tonight.  It's quiet.  

I've never really had writer's block.  That's because I'm not a writer I guess.  I'm in my basement.  Yelling.  Actually I have a lot to say.  Quite alot.  Is a-lot two words or one?  S'pose it doesn't matter, does it.  Not allot anyway.  I'm going to go to a writer's group "meet-up" tomorrow evening.  Maybe I'll go.  See, I'm not really a writer per se.  I write because I have to.  I write because the words need to get out of my head - they get so jammed up in there, and not much space for them either.  Not in my head.  No, I write so they can get out and have their freedom.  Sometimes they all behave and get together and say something almost profound.  that's when they have the most fun.  they snuggle into sentences and all play together.  Sometimes they're all just angry and get out and lay on the page and don't talk to each other.  My basement floor is littered with the paper graves of the dead words who didn't get along and died early deaths.  but I keep them.

I have a book in Chicago "Writing to Save Your life".  Bought it out of curiosity.  It's ok.  It was written by a woman who teaches writing (that's why I bought it).  It's to an audience of (mostly I gather) women who are trapped or stymied or otherwise choked off from their lives by something and writing can be a way to free yourself.  Well, damned if that isn't what I do.  But I'm not free.  My words get free sometimes.  I'm just down here yelling and nobody hears it, which is why I yell.  It's safe.  

I absolutely know that I can write.  I love it.  It's creative.  and I don't know a goddam thing about it.  not a damn thing, except what I learned in high school English and here and there.  Oh, and i must give my wife credit.  She's the perfectionist and has made me a reluctant one.  

As I write this free-form ramble I pass so many roads down which I want to explore.  so many threads of thought.  

Well, I'm done with this one.  I lay it out neatly on the sand here and sit for awhile and look at it.  I feel better.  Soon it will settle into the sand and be gone.  As will I be, over the horizon.