November 22, 2008

Have been contemplating the chill in my writing, and I think it has to do with the disaster in Chicago. I managed to keep the bad production and the bad reviews from becoming a conscious depression, but they apparently became a sort of mystical one anyway. It has surprised me through the years how I react to setbacks such as that. I think they don’t affect me, but one morning I will take stock and realize I haven’t sent anything out in two years, or that I have stopped writing in whatever genre suffered the loss, and turned to other things.I have been writing, if, significantly, on fiction rather than drama. But I would like the old obsession back.

A snail, white, with a pale blush of purple, patrols the fish tank, leaving little crooked trails behind it free of algae. The tank man came yesterday and filled it up to the brim, and added a killi fish to replace the one who leapt to his death. They’re my favorite. . . perhaps because they are inclined, or at least equipped, to leap to their deaths.

Burco International, the building next to the Flood in the River District, caught fire and burned. The damage seems to be superficial, but it was very cold and the water from the fire hoses froze and cars slipped and flipped on their roofs on Roberts Street and the Riverlink Bridge. Jolene rushed to the Flood, wondering what to do if the Bio-Diesel tanks caught fire. I suppose, run.

Coffee with HJ. We were enormously convivial and compatible, laughing at the same things, striving for the same things, comprehending one another’s strivings when they were different, understanding each other quickly. Perhaps its just needed for her to stop being my student long enough for a bridge to be built between us.

Am supposed to be on my way to B’s wedding, a night wedding at the Art Center. It amazes me what energy it takes to overcome the stay-home inertia on a freezing winter night.