The Writer Pauses

My head is swimming this morning, desperate to dwell on the gentle light of a rising sun, the embrace of cotton sheets (the Chief will tell me they are man-made fibres, and that one rarely finds cotton in the rental sector), even the diesel hum of the daily work run as people pour themselves away from sleeping peace, to work.

I am more in the mood for meditation than the Ministry, but Robert Frost would tell me I have promises to keep, and he would be right. Besides, Philosopher Jagger once said that you can't always get what you want. Fortunately, however, he did mention that if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. So I'm going to work.

I had a blog entry written for this morning (well really for yesterday, but one conversation leads to another, leads to another, leads to long past midnight and sleep), but I am shying away from a diary-style entry this morning. Sometimes this happens.

The Land Lord, who runs an estate agency on Castle Road, is intrigued by my diary.

"Stick that it your book!" he announces at the end of our conversations.

It makes me laugh, and oddly, always leads to an immediate compulsion to do just that. Although, if I did, I might end up writing about the Land Lord so often it would become more his diary than mine. And what could be stranger than ghost-writing someone else's diary?

The Land Lord has an antique typewriter in his office that I am utterly in love with. Although I don't need more objects, I am envious for a moment. The typewriter is my symbol for a writer, my grail. It was the first machine on which I wrote as a child, and the place I first conceived that I could do this for a living, for the rest of my life.

Perhaps I will steal it when he's not looking. Or break in under the cover of darkness like a commando. Although as I write this I appreciate that it may not be the wisest plan to post that intention on the Interpipe. Or maybe it's a double bluff........

I would also like a t-shirt with that as the main slogan - Stick that in your book!

I think it could catch on.

Karen Pommeroy: Are you saying that the death of one species is less tragic than another?

Donnie: Of course. The rabbit's not like us. It has no... (keen look at something in the mirror), it has no history books, no photographs, no knowledge of sorrow or regret... I mean, I'm sorry, Miss Pommeroy, don't get me wrong; y'know, I like rabbits and all. They're cute and they're horny. And if you're cute and you're horny, then you're probably happy, in that you don't know who you are and why you're even alive. And you just wanna' have sex, as many times as possible, before you die... I mean, I just don't see the point in crying over a dead rabbit! Y'know, who... who never even feared death to begin with.

Donnie Darko (2001)