103118 mind’s distracted and diffused (again) you shouldn’t smoke pot when you’re an adolescent because your brain is still developing and it hinders your ability to learn and remember especially verbal information. the AAA Asphalt guys are out there in the driveway. They’ve ripped off the scabby old layer, smoothed the crap out of the dust and gravel underneath, and now they are making the hose bib go whine whine whine every time they turn it on and off for some reason. i’m down here in the basement, actually just down below and on the other side of said hose bib, so when they walk up to it to turn it on or off, they’re literally only a few feet away from me, but they might as well be a world away. i feel like as soon as i sit down to start typing, all the important thoughts scatter like that flock of birds out by lincoln road on route 2, oconomowoc--in the summer and fall, i would wheel the old LLV through the intersection of franklin, having left melissa’s expensive concrete driveway that looks like a highway behind, en route to neu (“how could you not know the route--we’re *right here!*”) and gunther (“the neighbors”) and gunderson and sielaff and hottentot or whoever the fuck was on the other side of hwy P, and just about halfway between gunther and gunderson, there’d be this huge flock of little black birds that would suddenly lift off the ground like a sentient mist, and they would wheel and circle and undulate, almost teasingly, until i got the camera out, whenupon they would suddenly disperse into thin air and stubbly field. assholes. that’s what my thoughts are like. i know for a FACT i’ve had all kinds of important thoughts and half-born stories and inspirations and wet wet ravines of mind magic glowing down through the fertile mossy runnels of my imagination’s glistening pussy, but i can’t for the life of me get a fix on any one of them now that i’m sitting here. HOW DO NOVELISTS DO IT? this question antagonizes me weekly. not quite daily; i don’t want to get too dramatic. but yeah, i’d say on average about once a week i’m like, DAMN DOROTHEA. HELP ME. HOW DO I GO FROM JUST DAY AFTER DAY OF WRITING DOWN RANDOM SHIT JUST TO PROVE THAT I CAN HAVE THE DISCIPLINE TO DO SO, TO ACTUALLY PIECING TOGETHER SOMETHING THAT COULD ACTUALLY BE A COHERENT STRING OF WORDS THAT SOMEBODY MIGHT WANT OR LIKE OR NEED TO READ SOMEDAY? I feel like the karate kid kid, just waxing on and off every goddamn day, only my thing has been going on since fucking July, and there’s no end in sight. He only had to do that through a montage or two inside the tidy confines of a one and a half hour movie or so. Fuck. Me. Welp. Here we are again at that point. It’s like we have a river, right? But for whatever reason our settlement isn’t right next to the river. Maybe it used to be. Maybe there was an earthquake. Maybe we got chased off the land by warlike hordes or something. I don’t know; it doesn’t matter why not. But so we also have a bucket. Obviously, we need water, so we take our bucket in hand, and walk along down the trail, singing and chatting and feeling big hearts tumble out of us and bounce around all over the place every time we look at our big-eyed children and hear them changing the words of the songs and laughing. We get to the river. Ya with me so far? Everything seems fine. The sun’s out (the sun’s *always* out here), it’s a nice day. There’s no warring hordes or killer giraffes or whatever. We go down to the river and dip that bucket right in there. It’s almost sensual, man, the way it slides right in and laps up that big juicy curve of water and suddenly gets heavy as a full breast. We pick it up. We start back up the rocky hill towards the settlement. It’s super hot so some of the water evaporates. It’s super rocky and hilly, so some of the water splashes out. It’s super far, so we get thirsty and the kids are like pleeeeeeeeeeeeez, and so we drink some of the water before we even get back. Sometimes you drop a bucket because your hand gets tired or you get stung by a wasp. Sometimes the bucket straight up leaks. You get the picture. By the time we get back to the settlement, there’s like a few ounces of dirty sludge left in the bottom of the bucket, swirling around in there, and when you look down in, this little waterbug looks up at you in annoyance and goes, “What?” because you interrupted his leisurely bath. God damn it. So you head back to the river. The boys outside, the boys that are inches away from my face but don’t know it because of concrete blocks and lack of perceptual awareness, they’re having a good old time. One of them just yelled, “OOOh, YEAH” about something. I wonder if they’re going to put my hose back like they found it, all coiled up on the porch? My timer just went off. And so I head back to the river.