Stealing Writing Time in Boston

I don't know, maybe it was the roses. The roses or the ribbons in her long brown hair.

Woke up with that song playing in my mind, no idea why. Yesterday was a 15 hour grind. Conference started at 7 in the morning and wound up on a booze crooze of Boston harbor from which I disembarked at 10 PM. All the time I was upset because I wasn't writing. All the time I kept thinking "A house divided against itself cannot stand." And then I got to thinking about how all these people on the booze crooze (okay maybe two or three) were younger than I and already more successful, probably because they'd followed their dreams while I straddled the fence that divides Dreamland from Responsible Life and in the process squished my nuts flatter than two Lima beans.

Not to mention I was doing a great job with my freaking stomach condition until all of a sudden I wasn't and my gut went into full-fledged revolt. And in the midst of all this on a boat w/the grandeur of a sun-setting (and then moon-rising) Boston harbor scrolling impossibly past, I found myself in a conversation with the hot wife of some CIO and the conversation went on and on, she would not let it die, and something in me shifted from the happy technologist to the Desperate Comedian.

And I became the buffoon. Willingly. Gladly. I began to spout whatever nonsense came into my head and it felt good because people were laughing and it was almost like writing. When we got to shore I spend some time in a brown study trying to figure it out. Why did I do these things? Why was I so willing to sacrifice my tincture of dignity for some laffs?

My life. My stomach. My writing. All whirling in the head like Lotto balls.

But it's really all about powerlessness. That's what it's really all about. The willingness to LEAVE the fucking data points the fuck alone and not try, not endlessly grind, to make those data points into a coherent and happy story of MY LIFE. To not compulsively seek my happy ending.

I'm powerless. I DON'T know what it all means. I really don't. I DON'T know why I'm here, or why it feels like I have an angry gerbil clawing his way out of my esophagus (take that, Richard Gere), or why anything. And I don't need to know why. That is the mind-bending miracle (and the very high hurdle) of recovery.

So thank you for writing about your fight w/the wife and with such vehemence and eloquence. You did that thing that you do so well! You built up one of those composite images that always make me jealous when I read them. And, well, anyway, you know I'm there for you and that fighting w/the wife is the most painful thing you can do. Please let me know when the makeup sex happens.