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<\/p>\nEditor\u2019s Note:\u00a0The arrival of Marlow\u2019s thoughts- the unfinished ones- was timely this morning. They are bracing and add context to this morning\u2019s attempt to understand what happened in the Opera Buffe on The Hill, the mess in Ukraine and two other regional conflicts in motion now. It is a time of great and fundamental change. And as Marlow demonstrates, it can require a positive transformation…<\/p>\n
–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Vic<\/p>\n
Long ago one April<\/p>\n
Unfinished Manuscript
\n<\/p>\n
Pages from an unfinished Dr Seuss book manuscript (courtesy Saunders Auctions)<\/p>\n
Not writing is no good but trying to write when words fail you stinks.\u00a0\u00a0Writing about writer’s block is better than not writing at all, so . . . .<\/p>\n
I am quite used to sitting in a small room, in front of a computer keyboard and making words cascade down a screen like black snowflakes against a white sky.\u00a0\u00a0So when the words are not forthcoming, I won\u2019t get up and walk away from my digital typewriter.\u00a0\u00a0Why?\u00a0\u00a0All I\u2019d have left would be the sickness which started me typing in the first damn place.<\/p>\n
I have witnessed enough of mankind in supermarkets, 7-11s, freeways, bars, restaurants and windowless, humorless rooms of war.\u00a0\u00a0One can\u00b4t help but do this after living for six plus decades.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ve tried it all — war, women, travel, marriage, children, the works.\u00a0\u00a0I suppose I wanted to know about things, what made them work.\u00a0\u00a0So, I don\u2019t feel like kicking myself in the ass for not watching things carefully for new material.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s true even sometimes for those gatherings, when the drinks are free and I have a designated driver ride home.<\/p>\n
For better or worse, I don\u2019t get much inspiration from what is current.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It’s the same old thing in\u00a0disguise.\u00a0\u00a0Only one thing comes without a\u00a0disguise, and you only see it\u00a0once, or\u00a0maybe never, like getting hit by a whistle-less freight\u00a0train or a car that runs a red light.<\/p>\n
I\u00b4ve got enough clay to fiddle with in my writing.\u00a0\u00a0But as time passes, forgetfulness is emptying me.\u00a0\u00a0So, in spite of myself, I must refill.<\/p>\n
I\u00b4m not sure what\u00b4s best for me in this regard.\u00a0\u00a0Should I sit somewhere, smoke a short cigar and watch.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Seldom do I think doing that would lead to a chance meeting of a rare or interesting person.\u00a0\u00a0I think the endless waiting would make me goddamn grouchy and off I\u2019d go in search of a river of whiskey and music played so damn loud I couldn’t think.\u00a0\u00a0That worked for a long time down here in Key West.<\/p>\n
Maybe what\u2019s needed is reinventing myself, changing my tone and shape often so I don\u2019t fully categorize myself.\u00a0\u00a0Or fall into ruts.\u00a0\u00a0Reinvigoration.\u00a0\u00a0Reinvention.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Self-taught.\u00a0\u00a0Your history and present belong only to you.<\/p>\n
When the words flowed in the past, I was never sure whether what I had written was good or bad.\u00a0\u00a0No matter its quality, it likely was due to the low-down southern whiskey I was drinking.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This brown magic juice made my heart beat faster and sometimes helped my mind see things.\u00a0\u00a0It certainly dulled the ache that came with the deadly drone of life.<\/p>\n
My spirits were lifted each time I saw that the very poor and very rich extremes of society were allowed to mingle freely in the dives I frequented.\u00a0\u00a0But I didn’t get why my spirits were often so low.\u00a0\u00a0It took decades, not hours, days, months, or years of feeling absolutely terrible and that nothing would change that; neither health professionals, changes of diet, drink, humility, or God would fix it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I should have awakened and stopped insisting on clearing my head and cleared my damn aching heart instead.<\/p>\n
I was like waiting and waiting.\u00a0\u00a0Didn’t I know that waiting was one of the things that drove folks crazy or killed them dead?\u00a0\u00a0I saw it in the lives of others.\u00a0\u00a0People waited all their lives.\u00a0\u00a0Most waited to live, the truly hopeless waited to die.\u00a0\u00a0We waited in line to buy toilet paper at the market. We waited in line in front of unmanned bank machines for money.\u00a0\u00a0Those who didn’t have any money waited in longer lines downtown in unemployment offices, shelters and soup kitchens.\u00a0\u00a0All of us waited to go to sleep and then waited to awaken.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When it was dry, we waited for it to rain.\u00a0\u00a0Then we waited for it to stop.\u00a0\u00a0We waited to eat and then we waited some more to eat again.\u00a0\u00a0Some waited to get married and others waited, sometimes too long, to get divorced.\u00a0\u00a0We waited in the courtroom with a bunch of other unhappy couples for the judge to issue the dissolution order.\u00a0\u00a0Afterwards I wondered no more if I was finally going to stop waiting and start living.<\/p>\n
But that courtroom event happened much, much later, and only after I had started to die.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I didn’t get that I was dying by my own hand just to get away from her.<\/p>\n
There were signs, sad ones, that it wasn\u2019t working early on.\u00a0\u00a0Even when times were what appeared to be okay, we didn’t sing or laugh, or even argue.\u00a0\u00a0We sat across from one another, eating and drinking in darkness.\u00a0\u00a0Afterwards I would smoke cigarettes or cigars.\u00a0\u00a0Later, when we went to sleep, I didn’t put my feet on her body nor she on mine like we used to.\u00a0\u00a0We would sleep without touching.<\/p>\n
When I saw the signs for what they were and got it, I fought for each minute.\u00a0\u00a0I fought to fight for what was possible within myself, so that my life and death would not be like the others.\u00a0\u00a0I had nothing to really get away from except for one person.<\/p>\n
The problem up till then was that I kept choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what I chose, these bad things sliced a just little bit more off of me, until there was almost nothing left.\u00a0\u00a0At the age of 45 when most people were just beginning a new phase of life, I was almost finished.<\/p>\n
I finally learned from the regrouping and the moving on.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I had been stricken with fear for decades.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I feared failure so much that I almost died — too conditioned, too used to being told what to do.\u00a0\u00a0It began with the family, ran through parochial school, church and finally thirty plus years in the military-industrial world.\u00a0\u00a0Failure wasn’t an option, but strangely death was.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t lonely back then.\u00a0\u00a0I had lots of friends, close ones.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Oddly I experienced no self-pity.\u00a0\u00a0I was just caught up in a life in which I could \ufb01nd no meaning.<\/p>\n
We had lots of laughs.\u00a0\u00a0Then we started to laugh when there was no reason to laugh.\u00a0\u00a0That should have signaled that we were crazy.\u00a0\u00a0Were we nuts?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Who knew?\u00a0\u00a0Insanity is comparative.\u00a0\u00a0We told ourselves that it depended on who set the norm.\u00a0\u00a0When a stranger said in our earshot, “those guys are nuts.” we curiously felt honored.<\/p>\n
I should have looked honestly in a mirror.\u00a0\u00a0Maybe I’d have seen my real self.\u00a0\u00a0Like somewhere\u00a0\u00a0. . . suddenly . . . say in a large mirror in a furniture store . . . bloodshot eyes like little ladybugs . . . face contorted, a bit demented, a freaking mess. Yet, when I did look, I saw the regular guy I felt I was.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My God, I’d say to myself, I\u2019m glad I\u2019m not one of\u00a0them.<\/p>\n
Now that I have recovered, there is finally something here for death to take away.<\/p>\n
I know that I can\u2019t beat death, but I have finally beaten death in life.\u00a0\u00a0The more often I learned to do it every day, the more light was in my life.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Since my life is my life, I know it while I got it.<\/p>\n
I haven’t died
\nyet
\nand I have certainly
\nlived<\/p>\n
thank God that I’m alive
\ntonight
\nWe are only given
\nso many evenings
\neach wasted evening is
\na gross violation against the natural course of your one and only life.<\/p>\n
Dying will come easy:
\nlike the 5 AM trains I
\nhear when
\nI’m asleep on my
\nside<\/p>\n
I am blocked no more.<\/p>\n
– words from an unfinished manuscript<\/p>\n
–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Marlow<\/p>\n
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