Starlight from the Coming Through

23 June 09

It isn't so much a shortage of time that prevents you from writing when you have a newborn, but a shortage of discipline. You go all soft over the little monkey flower and there isn't much hard left in you to get going in the dark early morning – to say nothing of turning away from the cooing cuteness by day light. But if any writing is to be done it has to be at the crack of dawn, the hour of peace before the world avalanches down on you. Still have only a little inspiration for fiction. Am in a state of the "present", a very enhanced present, and fiction, with its escape-doors into fantasy, doesn't appeal to me now. I've a feeling like being on the cusp of a wave and the sheer uprolling wall below me will take all the attention and agility I've got to get down it; a feeling of impending greatness, not mine, but the great hair-raising joyride of life itself. What that means for writing or my next writing project I don’t know and don't want to worry too much over.

Still, am frustrated over carpentry, my inability to find purposeful work outside of the trades, my lack of vision beyond the quotidian. Of course writing is a vision beyond pounding nails. But writing, mine anyhow, doesn't pay the bills. And that whole working class fiction of bettering your family's standing through a life of wage-slavehood doesn't sit well with me. The trades: as in, trade in your life. The trades as craft, sure, I get that. It's why I like building. But trades as social step-ladder? First of all, I don't want to step up anywhere. And secondly, job security, pensions, company health insurance, union cohesion, all of that is going fast, and throw in illegal workers undercutting wages – the whole damn ladder has turned into a slippery slide. Makes Russell Bank's Continental Drift look like a world of Fifties progress and prosperity by comparison.

But the other night . . . that look an infant gives you, when in the middle of the blackness after a long inconsolable bawl, they go suddenly quiet and gaze into your eyes – that searching and fearful, yet serene and reassuring look as they calm and concentrate their souls upon yours, eyes blue by the starlight of the window. They know something, still know it from before, still feel the connection from the other side – their eyes still damp with starlight from the coming through. And they look into you seeking that same connection, the understanding that they're going to be all right, that they've made it across and arrived in loving arms, in the company of souls whom they've known for a very long time now and are getting to know again. And sometimes in the middle of the night, it's them telling you all that, reminding you of where you've been together and where you're going; her sweet tired smile telling you not to worry too much, telling you it's going to be all right.