on not writing
I’ve been watching a lot of Girls* lately. Girls came out when I was in college and I never watched it. The whole “voice of a generation” thing (even if it was tongue-in-cheek) turned me off. Combined with Lena Dunham’s unrelenting case of foot-in-mouth disease I was not about it. But what the hell, it’s pandemic life and I finally bought a TV after two years of not having one and I do have HBO streaming, so here we are two weekends later. Hilarious. I love all the bad sex in it because what is being an early 20s hetero woman without copious amounts of mediocre peen? Adam is the worst/best and I’m strangely thirsting over Adam Driver. I like Shoshanna too. I see bits of myself in her nervous tendencies and mind on overdrive.
I get into this mood after watching bildungsroman-esque things, like Girls, where I move through my day as a screenplay. Like today, in my denim jeans that are a half-size too big and my oversized black turtleneck tunic with a black beanie and denim jacket. And black face mask, obviously. Nico’s “These Days” is playing in the background on my walk to the Whole Foods by Broadway and Thorndale. I get there and linger at the plants at the front, like I always do. There’s a group of vibrant Alocasias for $9.99 each and I almost get one until I pull out my phone and google “Alocacia pet safe” - they aren’t - since I am a cat momma now. I go into the store and breeze through my initially small list that grows while I’m in the store. Because being a cat momma means being even more of a germaphobe than I already am and fielding paranoia that tiny cat poop particles are littered through my home, even though Dusty tracks a pretty small amount of kitty litter. (She is a darling and I’m having a rough time adjusting to sharing my personal space. It’s not her, it’s me).
In my screenplay mind the camera briefly pans to the other face-masked customers. The woman with dreadlocks whose mask says “Immunity” in gold letters picks up some sparkling water. Two men in bomber jackets and matching side parts linger in front of the arugula. A septuagenarian stoops down to grab a box of sushi rice on the bottom shelf.
These days, scenes play themselves in my head before finding their way to a page. I have not been writing lately. I’ve been setting up new furniture, playing with my 13-year-old adoptee cat, burning incense like crazy so I know my apartment doesn’t smell like cat, trying to not vom over wet cat food’s smell, enjoying some late night kitty purrs and lovey eyes, also respecting kitty’s agency while also respecting my own....there’s an election happening stateside and a burgeoning revolution in Nigeria. My world is rife with writing material but sometimes, I don’t feel like connecting dots. I don’t live to write, perhaps I don’t write to live either. I totally drafted an alternate post about what it means to be a writer not writing but quite frankly, I lost idea steam. I’m riding out 2020 into something that grows better. Some of us have to process our stuff first. My own writing brain works best after some built-in buffering time.
*I’m not advocating that anyone go out of their way to watch this show. At this moment in time, I watched a lot of Girls and was caught off guard by its humor (although very myopic and um, inappropriate). Someone recently reminded me of just how horrible Lena Dunham is and I’m not trying to intentionally promote her at all.