Desire and longing...

Today is one of those days. It's pouring outside and the sky is the color of old underwear. My house is a wreck and the laundry is piled in a big stinky heap. Everywhere I look, there's something that needs my help and yet, I'm stuck, unable to move forward or backwards. It's a hateful sensation. That means it's a good time to write.

When I absolutely don't want to, it's always a good time to write. Frankly, my feelings of high inspiration are few and far between. What happens most often is that I shamble over to the computer, plop myself down with a groan, click on the file, stare at what I did the day before, and just start writing. Producing something good can happen when I'm sick, heartbroken, beat down, or broke. It doesn't matter what I feel like, except when it does.

In graduate school, I took a sculpture course one semester, thinking that this time I'd be terrific at it. Never mind that I had never shown the least aptitude for making anything three-dimensional. Pottery, jewelry, or sculpture, it didn't matter. My work was predictably rotten. It probably stemmed from a particular blindness when I viewed the world itself. I was blind towards reality's three dimensions. What I saw was one flat transparent plane over another, like images painted on glass. Still, there was a new sculpture teacher and I liked what I saw coming out of his classes. I could just imagined the wonderful stuff I'd make.

Cut to the chase, right to the part where he loathed my work and gave me a C at mid-term. I rightly viewed this as a catastrophe, since C's were always unacceptable in graduate school, plus I'd been awarded a merit scholarship and he was on the awards committee. Immediately, I pictured myself swirling helplessly towards a big sucking drain and realized I needed to do something. Somehow, talentless as I was, I had to make some good sculpture and do it fast.

I spent the next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in my studio, working day and night, trying out my ideas, which were few and ugly. I remember thinking at the time that having to be creative was a slog: brutal, grueling and tedious. But somehow I came up with three pieces, one of which my teacher acclaimed as wonderful. I was so tired, I couldn't see what he saw and didn't care. I was toast. When he asked if he could have the piece, I nodded and handed my sculpture over wordlessly, glad to see it go.

My grade was saved and I became more cautious, especially about venturing where I didn't belong. But that isn't terribly important.

The big lesson here is that a lack of desire is different from not feeling like it. Paddy Chayefsky wrote, Desire and longing are the whips of God. If those two elements are missing, nothing can conjure them up. Proceeding without desire is perilous. It rots your soul and wastes entire weekends.

And so, at night, when I drag my unwilling carcass over to the manuscript box, and fish out my novel, I certainly don't feel like doing much. At the same time, like a dark subterranean river, within myself I sense the old, persistent excitement. My boredom will disappear quickly enough; the thrill is forever.