The longer I sit at my “desk” (it’s a table, though: blond wood, stained with 50 years of breakfasts in my grandparent’s kitchen) the less interesting the inside of my head becomes. But I wouldn’t really know. I’m not letting myself in there. What am I hiding in that hard skull that I do not want myself to witness?
I move to the living room: a dining room table of brown Ikea wood is covered with junk mail and the indecipherable clutter of my partner. Clean it up? Not now, I want to write! Still my mind rebels. I’ve got nothing. I don’t know why I even try. Upstairs, the neighbor’s phone vibrates through the ceiling, and the distraction turns me again from my work. Emails fly cheerfully into the upper right corner of the computer screen, popping up like fans behind the free-throw hoop.
I have nothing but distraction. I have no tips for myself, no tips for the other writers who spend their days in a state of suspended concentration. My imagination, so active in my sleep, has shut down for now, and all I can comment on is what I am doing, right now, at this very moment: articulating the space around something I don’t want to think about.
La Giraffa 