Journal log entry – Sometimes writing is like going under the knife. I cut out memories and observations, pull them together, stitch them up like Frankenstein’s monster, and hope for life. Occasionally the storm is afoot and a jolt gets the gears moving, but other times it’s just too sunny and the body only lies there … or there are not enough limbs, and the half-arms and half-legs drip like dangling participles. I am searching for my storm now. No more than a shaven head, my corpse has not yet taken shape, and if the storm were now to come, the pulsating vein in its forehead might even spray me bloody with an idea.

Do you see how revolting this is … to not follow the natural order!?!

Ideas, then words, and then life, that’s the natural order, not this half-life feeding me for its own survival … but … but do I lie to my own morbid self?

Face to face with my words’ mortality, each new sentence or paragraph is accomplished as easily from the natural order as well … dare I say … from the experiment gone astray. Sometimes the words dying on the table breathe new life into a story … but there is no reason to slaughter innocent words for that sake. You will find that they die easily enough. Don’t get me wrong, there are, many times, the pudgy newborns, budding flowers of youth, cradled and nurtured from conception to their own maturity, but likewise, I mention, less we forget, are the bones and flesh piecemealed together where life is derived out of, might we say … happenchance. I could go on, and I must … for a writer should write and the only way to knock down the barrier is to keep running into it. So I grab this shaven head I’ve so far molded, and batter it against the block till the block chips and chips away … and search for safe passage on the other side.

Signing off,

Roger and out