One (a virtuosity of vices)

One, a vice of one? One needs a virtuosity of vices … A symphony… Virtue /vice – reminds me too much of biblical leanings. One is the loneliest number one… Oh, piss off ear candy! Get over it. Everybody's happy writing from the attribute of virtue/ vice—except me. I can't get to the next level. Begin again. Now, I'm caught up in word puns and silly rhymes, and God forbid: pop songs  (number one)– partially because I'm so stressed. One. To contemplate. I like one, I like its aloneness, the way it stands like a sacred stone. An "I am." I like the color and the sound of it – and synesthesia strikes again. One is silver-white, and casts a pale shadow of glacial ice, it rings like a silver bell, or like that melodic crash of ice crystals. The queen of Narnia is a one. Cate Blanchett is an ice maiden, cruel, ruthless, and alone in her sleigh is a One. Always winter. I yawn, my ears pop, finally after several days of pain. I can hear. One-eared, I was. No dulcet duet of sound. Singing in pitch was problematic when sound was a singular one. I had to rely on memory. Now I can hear every single thing. The sound of paper rustling, like an avalanche, the rough scratching of pens in unison, a scratch of pens, one in unison. One, I am one.

8/25/06 Writers' Group

Filial love

What we heard, was filos, as in philosophy, not love of children for their parents. As usual, I find it problematic writing from virtuous ashram-inspired prompts. I wish we had moved onto another exercise. Months of this, and as a writer, I hunger for the particular over the abstract, the profane over the sacred. Writing from abstraction, and is an anethma, even an enema. There, I’ve used an abstract word in a sentence. Try to describe abstract in concrete detail. Filial, finial, final. Earlier, we were talking about the kinky metier of cultures, the Japanese and British won, hands down. Lauren tells me about Japanese women dressing up as schoolgirls. I can’t fathom the concept of child porn or pedophiles. We were talking of Peter Greenway, Being Peter Greenway is not a movie I’d want to watch. Images, you can’t shake off, once you’ve seen them, there is no undo—like that scene in Reservoir Dogs where Christopher Walken pulls the pocketwatch out of his ass… This is censorable writing. I can’t read it to the group now. And I am so off-topic, it’s almost funny. I’m still lost in junk. Love. Love of children, for their parents, or vice versa? Back to the vice squad. Again. Bell. Out of time. Three minutes of contemplation that I don’t want to contemplate. My head hurts. I didn’t do my assignment. I’m off task and I am not interested in writing about filial love so I blew it off. Blow it off. Taboo, be a bad girl. Be ornery. Fuck the rules. Get it? Saved by the bell. Again. Shit. Five more minutes of this and I’m stuck in this boring superficial freewrite. Waste of time. My time. Time is what I make of it. I have only myself to blame. Role reversal. Teach kids. I love them. Sick of them. Same breath. When I was a child… The other day, a dog bit Neil when he was in the recording studio. Not his pretty face, but close. So much for the fidelity of Fido. The kids, what about them? Their love for the dog, Dexter, whose days are now numbered, the aching, moral dilemma. Put the dog down? Kids will howl and weep for the loss of their beloved playmate. But now the question is raised. Fido was an infidel. The parents’ love for their children, to protect them against danger, imagined, or otherwise. A deep bond. Man’s best friend, but this time, the dog loses.

8/25/06 Writers’ Group