8:32 a.m. - 2023-08-01
not Willie
Ooof, with the writing. Prose has been a struggle of late. The phrases that turn, turn...but a few sentences per page inevitably refuse to cooperate. Sometimes they convey as intended, only tediously; weighed down by a distracting, rhythm-killing, verbosity. Or they're beset w/structural flaws; objects preceding subjects, complements and adjuncts pointing in the wrong direction...until the whole mess devolves into drunken Yoda-speak. Occasionally a misconjugated word will stand out like an actor reciting lines from the wrong scene, and all too frequently the final product reads like a multi-vehicle pile-up, with semi-colons and ellipses strewn tragically across the median.
This is a relatively recent development, and it begs the question; growing pains as an “author”? Or evidence of cognitive decline?
Regardless, these little Diaryland entries serve as important (to me) editing exercises...and were you to read them a month after initial posting, I daresay you'd grant me the benefit of “competence”. Well, sometimes. Because there are sentences that, regardless of revisions, resist. These hard cases haunt me. Like a schoolgirl who learns an ex has “shared” her nude selfies, I can't sleep knowing they're out there, on the internet. So I'll rework them, click edit, read again, frown and rework again. I'll rework the same sentence again that evening and again over coffee when I awake. I will rework it until the original idea becomes unrecognizable, like Micheal Jackson's nose.
~ ~ ~
I plugged Sinéad O'Conner and Pee-Wee Herman's names into the “Celebrity Death Rule-Of-Threes” calculator, but can't bring myself to hit “equals”. Because...what if it's Willie Nelson? I can't handle that right now. None of us can. Because his work here among us can't be finished?!? It's too soon to call him back to heaven or his home planet or some excellent parallel dimension that smells like the dankest-ever cosmic bong hit. When the earth completely catches fire (next year), I need Willie to be fingerpickin' and crooning, without a trace of irony, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”.So please, Death, maybe work with us on this one? And take another celebrity instead? (Kid Rock, Charlie Sheen...the dude from Tool Time...help yourself, really.)
~ ~ ~
I'd given her a ride out to go swimming and run her dog up on the trail, and was taking her home when I stopped by my cabin.“This'll just be a minute, I gotta grab something.”
“I want to see your place.”
“Nah, it's a mess really, and there's nothing to see.”
“Oh, come on.”, she said, following me inside...
“It smells like you.”
“Wait, what? I smell like dirty socks and burnt coffee?”
She didn't answer, just picked up a magazine and began flipping through pages. As women will.
