Half way there? Dec. 21, 1985

  

I can’t remember the last time I took two whole days off from work – illness or not. But the habit could spoil me, getting me to realize just how good it feels to be relaxed.

Safire is here, all the way up from Maryland, part of this insanity we call “love.” Sick or not, making love is the order of the day.

It even snowed (in time for Christmas), leaving a white layer of skimpy frost as our gift (not much but better than coal. If it doesn’t warm up over the next few days, we might legitimately claim we’ve had a White Christmas.

Meanwhile, my illness takes it usual course, and I struggle with the idea that I’m wasting time in attempting to create under such inhospitable conditions – weary and sneezing, desperate to write but without energy to do so.

I’m almost tempted to quit work entirely and regain my youthful vigor and then plunge into learning my craft.

Only things do not work that way.

Already my body has changed from the great driving days of 79 and 80 when I could almost endure anything. These days, I feel every ache and pain, weariness and strain like I didn’t back then.

My 35th Christmas is only a few days away. A half a life time (if I’m lucky), and yet little accomplished so far.

I suppose the man on the radio was right when he said some people simply have a built-in drive for greatness, while the rest of us simply plod along.

But poet Gray was right, took, when he said opportunity plays as great a role in becoming great as talent does. A farmer, forced to toil in his fields from sun up to sun down is less likely to achieve greatness than the spoiled Ivy League brat who get to flit away his hours.

I am still the farmer, if not in the fields, working long hours leaving little time or energy to advance that part of me I want to promote.

Working as I do now, I have to subtract the hours I must labor from those I can commit to my labor of love.

It is always a trade off between survival and creativity.

Even the zine is largely a blood sucker, doing poorly partly because we as artists don’t know what the fuck we are doing.

I do not think like a business person.

For the New Year, I must resolve to straighten some of this out. Yes, I know, such resolutions are rarely carried out.

And yet, as sluggish at it all seems, a plodding as my life has become, the last few years have shown progress. I’m a better writer than I was, and I expect to be better still as I go on. My talent and my inspiration seem in sync. I am learning how to control the mass of wordage that flows through me and onto paper on a daily basis, and this only after a few years of serious endeavor.

How much better will I become in ten or twenty or thirty years?

That’s the game, Watson, creative independence!

Only these are not the times of great literary grants or sponsorships, especially considering my political social views. I’ve already offended potential benefactors with the last few issues of our zine, and it won’t get any better any time soon.

This brings us to that other critical element of the creative process called integrity. I’m not the kind of writer that tolerates outside restrictions, important people telling me what I need to say or do. I’ll always react to the establishment the way Edgar Allen Poe did, meaning I’ll likely be destined to a similar end.

I must gamble that if I get my work out, people will read it and accept it for what it is.

That’s not an easy hope in a world where everybody wants to censor everybody that disagrees with them.

 

 1985 Menu


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