feeling

When the feeling comes back I realise it has been a while. I have been sleeping in the kind of smiley faced bliss of someone who has no need to care. When I feel it, return from distant memory, I know that I have begun to think that happy was some kind of natural state. It has a complex flavour but I break it down into its component parts, lonely, self-doubting, angry.

You are not a writer unless you are writing. Therefore I am not a writer. I know this as the positive reviews come flowing in. I know it as I prepare to stand up and chat pleasantly with readers at various festivals. I will want to stand and tell them. I am not a writer because I am not writing.

Yesterday I had three orgasms in a row. Sore, sated, I wondered why the sudden rush of excitement. something to do with my impotence when I settle in front of a computer. Something to do with the dry spell.

I settle in front of the computer. I send words that are nothing but similes all strung together, pretty tricks to hide the fact that there is no heart to the thing. Hard to read, he tells me and he is right, but I want to bite him for it. I want to hunker down like a wolf and howl and snarl. I am suddenly back on the bridge looking down at the water. I am suddenly in the trench and him there telling me I am not allowed back in it. So it leaves me standing in the firing line, a helpless friendless target and I turn my gun on him, friendly fire, because he will not help me now. This small success has left me naked and without a book to shield myself with.