Spent the week catching up with people whom I haven't seen in a while, talking writing and the incidentals of maintaining families and houses and selves. Followed my brother on a trek across the asphalt desert that has developed by the new freeway in LJ and made it to iced coffee in the jasmine sweetened alleyways of an old shopping center. It was as if, while I was trying to be the forward-thinking, project-finishing writer that I treat as my imaginary alter-ego, I was also having all the memories and dust shaken out of my brain.
Perhaps I expected something shiny or different to fall in my hands, some turn of phrase that would save this idea from disintegrating. Instead, all I've discovered are old containers of guilt and empty bottles of intentions, a few cracked shibboleths I think I was keeping to pass down somehow, even if they were broken. Even Ozymandias' broken feet were worthy of remembrance.
The novel is starting to feel like a closet into which I stuff randomness.
This worries me, especially given the fact that my desk is in constant danger of creating avalanches that could take out at least one dog. Give me a little leeway, and I will overstuff any container, refuse to throw away that thing that I touched once or got from the tourist slots at some local business, and consider balance to be primarily a physical skill. If this novel lies there, inert...I will continue to stuff in every spare thought.
At some point, it will cease to be a novel and just exist as a portmanteu.
