in praise of Townes Van Zandt (chronology of writer's block on a Saturday afternoon)

2009

There is still:

the editing
the bibliography
the footnotes.

There is still:

a sofa
an altar
a decade
of journals.

Some clothes; a bottle of tamari.

There is a bachelor party and a wedding

but neither of them are mine.

Somewhere in New Jersey a woman is dying.

There are still:

letters of recommendation
an application for a fellowship.

Still:

Al Green is singing.

My sister is writing.

Saylor called to tell me,
Mardou has absconded the city.

But all this is beside the point.

The point is that a girl once told me - in all seriousness - that she didn't know if she wanted to be an artist or a scientist, and therefore she was going to be a firefighter. Apparently the intervening two years have provided her with some clarity because, when I spoke to her yesterday, she told me that she was going to start studying polar animals.

My first thought?

You live in South Florida.

2010

Yesterday i woke up from a dream at 4:37am about swimming in a gray murky lake and being made fun of by a swimming instructor for not being able to swim.

But this is beside the point.

The point is that I didn't fall asleep again until after 3:30 last night, and today feels like some odd combination of the last day of school (which it is) and the last day of summer (which it isn't). Part of me wants to sleep, part of me wants coffee. Part of me is already half-dreaming of what will happen tonight after I visit a real mental hospital and imaginary set of conjoined twins:

Evelyn Evelyn

suffice to say that yesterday i felt like i was coming down with writer's block and it didn't feel good and every word i wrote seemed to lead me in the wrong direction and i decided to get rid of all my punctuation and it wasn't until after i had locked myself in an empty classroom that i realized that the wrong direction was really the right direction in the wrong order

I proceeded to reorganize my thoughts and took the following note:

thoughts are memories in the present tense.

I do not know if this is foolish or wise or both, and in the end it does not matter because we are all going to die anyway and who can ever really know about what comes next?

lyres and prophets)

or

(liars and profits?

2011

Apparently I get writer's block this time every April, and I just watched a documentary on this dead Texan:

Townes Van Zandt

It was Mardou that told me about him. It seems years ago. It was years ago. It seems more years than that. I closed the curtains, I watched the film. I'm listening to him now:

I used to play the mouth harp pretty good
hustled up a little dough,
but I got drunk and I woke up rolled
a couple of months ago.

They got my harp and they got my dollar,
them low life so and so's.
Harps cost money and I ain't got it
it's my own fault I suppose.

I have one paper left to write.

I'm sick of words.

Tonight, music.