and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

Wish I had something interesting to talk about on this lazy Monday work day... something from the weekend that would make you all laugh or cry or at least jump up and make a pb & j sandwich.. something.. anything. Words that inspire action inspire me. There is something to be said for a sentence that can make someone jump up and act. Run amok. Whatever. Apparently that sentence isn't going to be in this post today, so move along bucko, move along.

I'm trying to write this story right now but it's a big hole in my heart so it's terribly difficult. I've never run away from life into books and videogames before - not like I'm doing now. I've always read a ton and always enjoyed games of all sorts but I've reached a point where I am conciously moving to them when I have a little down time. The trick is to get to them before the mind does too much thinking because then I'm just doomed.

Of course the reading and the video games make finishing the story that much harder since I'm not working on it.

I work in fits and starts. Some nights I get two or three solid pages in, others I might get 2 or 3 sentences - I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing cause heck, I'm the only writer I know so what's normal?

Some people say you need to set aside large chunks of time for writing. They say you need to sit down away from the noise and the distractions and concentrate. It's the same advice they gave you in high school about homework, really, and I never took it then so I'm not going to take it now. I'll just keep writing when the moment strikes me. Since I'm not a particularly good writer, it works better that way. I'm not the sort that can sit down and crank out anything useful when I'm not in the mood.

The other thing I'm no good at is writing under the influence. It's a shame, really, cause I think a lot of people write some pretty funny shit when they are drunk or high or otherwise inebriated. Hemingway probably wrote a few lines lost in the sauce.. yah think? For me, though, if I'm three sheets to the wind and feeling all revelational I can barely contain the thoughts. They're like a flock of seagulls lit in the empty parking of my mind and I am the child running among them trying desperately to catch just one..

just one seagull. I am not greedy or ..

At some point I will have to concede certain things about this story I am writing. That is what is slowing me down right now. I will have to concede that it will either be painstakingly detailed (and perhaps boring) or that it will be more rhetorical than anything else. I will have to concede that I am going to write truthfully, from the heart, with all the bitterness happiness hope faith truth tragedy... or I will write for the reader and what they want to hear - or in this case, what they don't want to hear..

You see?

These are dilemmas that a pb & j cannot solve. Unfortunately.

Then there is the dilemma of time. The story becomes less clear, more dense, less detailed, more distant as time goes on and by not writing it I'm condemning it to a life at the bottom of my mind-sea - down where most stories and knowledge goes after it's done with and of no use anymore.

Which makes you wonder if there is use in anything, really. Thought, action, effort, faith. Truth, desire, feeling, emotion. Pain, tragedy, hope, perception. Useful?

An interesting question in the face of evolutionary psychology. One might argue that if we all thought this way, if we all decided to give up and stop playing the game .. well then where would we be? But that is just it. We will always play the game. Even in deciding not to play the game we are playing the game. Life, as you travel through it making various decisions, it's like a prison. You may work tirelessly to chisel through the back wall of your cell for years but alas, you will only discover you have chiseled into another cell.

Our only hope is that the adjoining cell contains another soul. A kindred spirit.