Waiting, waiting, waiting...

I can't read, I can't write, what's wrong with me? My gal Rae, my BFF, my port in the storm, my cheerleader and biggest fan for over 20 years (yikes, I'm old!) has her third book out. "Mother's & Daughters". Each of her first two I read in manuscript form. This one sits on my nightstand, 2 chapters in. Pages unturned for the last few weeks (and by the way it took me a few months just to read the first two chapters! And I liked them! And still, I don't continue! Eek.)

Friday Night Lights was a distraction, sure. But I suppose I was looking for one. I actually sat on a plane for 40 hours - to Cadiz, Spain and back - last week, and didn't even crack the book. I watched FNL episodes downloaded from iTunes. I read the NYT front to back from the prior Sunday. I watched several bad movies not the least bad of which was "Hall Pass" about two lame guys released from their marital obligations for a week.  While eagerly anticipating sex with hot strangers, they find themselves at Applebees, feckless and wandering, full on ribs, and unable to pick up chicks. Alas, the plight of the modern, maritally castrated man. (It's her fault he's so incompetent, of course.) I digress...

I can't even find the mojo to write these blogospheric inanities. Words elude me. My brain is vapor. My focus is shit. I am on point at work. But beyond commerce, my ideas evaporate.

I have a book idea in mind. A novel that begins with a husband going down on his wife only to extract a condom that she doesn't know is there.  Left there by her boyfriend, unbeknownst to her (the condom is unbeknownst, not the boyfriend).  And the games begin... it seems like kind of a funny scene. Woody Allen-esque. But I can't figure out where it goes.  Maybe because it's stupid.

I am trying my damnedest to trust in Anne Lamott. In "Bird by Bird" she writes that embarking upon a novel is like driving down a windy road with no headlights. You can only see just so far in front of your face. You need to go slowly, watch carefully and trust that if you follow the road, you will get where you are going. It's akin to putting one foot in front of the other. And I am paraphrasing so I may be getting it kinda wrong. Regardless, this is how I remember it and I like this analogy. I am doing it in my life at present. I wake up, I get myself together, I go to work, I answer the questions, I eat my lunch, I laugh a little. See my kids. Go on a date. Some good, some not good. I smile. Seek moments of grace and laughter.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Maybe you can only apply this windy road/no headlights thing to one area of your life at a time. I'm in it deep in my life, following the road, so I can't write a book. Maybe...

I think there is salvation, for me, in writing another book though. In proving to myself that I wasn't some angry 40 year old post-adolescent gymnast with an axe to grind. In proving that I might actually have the presence of mind to string together a few paragraphs, again. In a way that makes people want to read them. In a way that gives me a touch of enlightenment and joy and pride.

But for now, I'm going to embark on yesterday's Sunday NYT, ponder what next Friday's "Friday Night Lights" might bring, hug my kids and hope for some degree of divine intervention that prompts a good long sit at the keyboard at some point in the not too distant future.