I have written and deleted or saved a couple versions of this post. I’m running out of time and I need to get something on the page, raw and ragged as it may be, before my timer goes off.
Some days I spend too much time playing Nonograms and listening to Jon Stewart or John Oliver. That’s what I did today, even though my intended starting point this morning was to stop by Facebook and check in on business-group pages.
Then I decided to cut the shit and get working on Day 3 of 90. I asked Steve, who has a day off, to tell me something interesting about myself.
“Um, you’re from Indiana?”
So I spent some time looking at family photos, trying to find a photo of a house that no longer exists. By the time I’d found it, I remembered that part of my promise to myself was to get the writing done WITHOUT having to find the perfect photo.
I found two photos of the Olsen’s house, the house I remember more vividly than any other house I lived in, but the photos don’t do anything but record the existence my sister and a dog on the front porch. They show nothing of the strangeness of the place, the big, open living room with a boat-shaped fish pond underneath the stairs. Nothing of the curving two-story wall of windows that dangerous and scary stairs ran along, stairs that had only horizontal runs, no rises, and no handrail. How was that possible?
I have to publish this now because I made a promise to myself, but I can’t seem to find my point today. That houses long ago torn down exist in dreams? That even a deep well of memory can feel dry one day? That being uninspired leads to writing like this (because it does, whatever “like this” means)?
A commitment is a commitment. I’m overdue. Better luck reading tomorrow.