I absolutely should not be writing it, which is of course the reason I am writing it. It might not make much sense. Right now, the keyboard is a machine gun, and I am firing away at a sea of empty cans and bottles, letting off – what? Steam? Ennui? Yes, ennui. But how do you let off ennui? That is the kind of morning it is.
Across the top of the front page: Scott Peterson sentenced to death. Robert Blake acquitted. Who cares? The “Today” show, interviewing Amy what’s her name and Gloria the St. John’s lawyer. How did they feel when Scott’s death sentence was read? I tell you how I felt. I didn’t feel anything at all, except ennui.
I am using the word “ennui” like I actually know what it means. I don’t want to look it up in the dictionary – I don’t want to look up anything, read anything, hear anything or see anything that has anything at all to do with what we call contemporary “media information.” But of course that is the very reason to look it up, so the Webster’s definition of ennui is: “weariness and dissatisfaction resulting from inactivity or lack of interest.”
By God, I knew what it meant after all. That is almost exactly how this morning feels. Take Scott and Robert and Katie and George W. Bush and Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles and put them in a cannon and fire them to the Moon.
But it’s not inactivity. I have been activer than a one-armed weedcutter. Damn, I meant to have this done in five minutes, and I only have 30 seconds left. But I don’t care. What I need is a pry bar. A handyman came yesterday – we are planning some light renovations, which is something to look forward to. Part of it involves ripping out the absolute heaviest, ugliest, built-in benches ever conceived by man, and here they sit in my breakfast nook.
I told the handyman that I thought I would get after them with my sledge and wedge, just for the fun of destroying something, and he laughed and said that’s always the best part of his job. “My pry bar is my favorite tool,” he said, and this morning I understand him exactly. It is nice to understand at least one thing this morning, and actually care about it.
Incoming emails: from Sylvia, “My boyfriend isn’t impotent anymore.” From Justin: “LowEst prices on ViAgra.” Delicate equipment. Must not shove keyboard through face of monitor. Just give me 15 seconds with Sylvia and her boyfriend and then we’ll see about impotency. Let me get my pry bar between Justin’s teeth and pour in $100 of low-cost ViAgra and hold his jaw shut until he swallows.
Six minutes. Damn. I call myself a writer. I wrote something yesterday that I thought was good, but it wasn’t. If you left it out overnight, you’d have to fumigate the house. You could rip the roof off and it wouldn’t be enough to fumigate the worst 750 words ever to be struck onto paper. The poor paper. Another tree wasted. Screw the trees.
It’s just weariness and dissatisfaction, I know, resulting in lack of interest. What do you do about lack of interest? Yes, I know. You wait. You wait and cover your head against any and all information coming from wherever that passes through a sort of red haze in your head and gathers in your throat until your chest hurts and you just want to scream.
It’s a slump. I am a creative guy, who lives and feeds off information, and today not only am I not creative, I don’t give a damn about creativity. I just want to get on an airplane and fly off somewhere. Which tomorrow, gratefully, I get to do. Did you ever have a morning like this? Do I care? Ennui having fun yet? Wasn’t that awful?
Eleven minutes. I feel better. Oh God, the dog just smacked his lips.
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