Today, however, that work was not done until nine o'clock. As I sat back for a moment, inspiration struck with the words from a song: You can't find tomorrow through yesterday. That's it, a simple lyric and I went to work:
I live in a world of hell that I will not overcome without light. There is light. There is something for me out there, there is a hope in the dreams of a man who has no conception of anything other than what he sees in front of him and that is a hope which I can no longer avoid for fear of what lay behind. You say without yesterday there is no tomorrow and I say that without tomorrow there is no yesterday. Tomorrow is hope, yesterday is abject loss. I choose hope,
The primary protagonist, as many of you who have followed this evolving process of my current work know, is one who awoke in a Columbus, Ohio hospital with retro grade amnesia. He gets placed ina halfway house full of addicts and mental health patients because the doctors really do not know what to do with him and living in an apartment on his own, at first, is infeasible due to his lack of actual known history. But there comes this time when he must decide to become his own man and this is his vow of independence.
In many ways, this is a look at a typical human maturation process as we all have to set up a new life by leaving the fold of our parents and siblings and venturing into the world on our own. We are exactly like this man in that we have no real understanding about much, yet we feel ready for the world as if somehow living in a place we have always lived suddenly became stifling simply because we hit a magical number on a calendar that says we are adults.
In an earlier part of tonight's work I wrote:
I am lost and I am found. The fear in which I live is a lie created by the mind designed to protect itself. My name is Jeff, my name is nothing. I live a life of terror, I live a life of convivial calm. I live in a hell most can never know nor understand, lost and alone no matter where I am, it is a life here where the fear consumes me as I am faced daily with the bleakness of incessant pessimism that must be present for the continued existence of those who surround.
Duality plays a part in much of what I write because that concept to me is one which has been explored by so many and yet there is still so much exploring left. Am I best equipped to go on this exploration project? Well, I am the only one of me who can go on this trip and feel it is imperative as part of my muse to do so. Best is subjective. I am doing this because this is simply part of what motivates me as a writer.
I was happy to get in nearly 600 words so late in the day. As is often the case, when writing the more abstract parts of the book, parts which lack dialogue and action, the words come slow, but they come in spurts. The 600 words I wrote today were in less than 20 minutes.
Monday evening and all is written? Maybe, and maybe not. the muse yells and screams at times and mumbles at others; in all those tones we must listen to the muse and let her guide us into our own hope.
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