So like this friend tells me I should do yoga. And why the hell should I not be there – as in India on the earth in lotus position all by myself with the others? Ohm. Like Don Draper in the final scene of madmen. Ohhhhhhhhhm. Reaching within to his spiritual self then... Ding. The colossal idea is born.
Maybe it wouldn't happen, the click in my head. Isn't meditation about getting into yourself and letting go of ego, which is everything writing is not? Those things that are in it for you – well that's just an accident of life, right? Like falling in love, I guess. Yet won't going into myself bring forth the chain? They say something high is within me.
There's always the possibility I could be taking the whole yoga or exercising thing to mentally as I'm prone to do when I wreck perfectly simple ideas. But Suzanne, the one who suggested this, isn't she the one who said, "You got to find something spiritual, Jeff"?
Then again, Jesus, is it that big of deal to her? She majored in sports medicine in college. Wasn't she the one with her name on a piece of paper with all the other papers on the wall of the bulletin board in the lobby of the First United Methodist Church? "Yoga classes taught Monday and Thursday evenings by Suzanne _____."
That was at the funeral of Maria's grandmother. Seven years ago. Babs, the old lady who died, was born in San Bernadino, Calif. in 1931. Baptized in a Seventh Day Adventist Church at age 7. Died 2008.
Anyhow, that's how I found out Suzanne at least had a connection to yoga.
I'm creatively constipated. Ideas don't even come to me on the toilet anymore. No words. I'm like the poorlactose intolerant bastard blocked up by cheese. Hawkins, my old English teacher friend, now retired, suggested a cure for writer's block, prune juice.
"And free writing exercises?" I asked, regretting it almost before the words left my mouth.
"I don't use pussy-assed words like that,'" he barked.
"Then what in rat's fuck should I do? I don't think you're going to suggest a morning jog. So what, stick a scroll into a typewriter and cum all over the place? Cut the words out of magazines and affix them to my (Batman) journal so my wife will think I'm hearing voices like the man in that movie?"
"No, I think you should take the goddamned journal and write at that little dive downtown from your house."
"That fuck'n biker bar?"
"You think they give a fuck what you do? They're too busy gettin' drunk anyhow and I know your not a dumbass."
By that, I guess he meant I wouldn't try to fit in with the bikers and get the shit kicked out of me like the poor bastard in Hunter Thompson's Hell's Angels, some hippie just wantin' to hang out.
I guess I've got choices. I'm at Carmody's Donut Whole in downtown Wichita right now, listening to the college kids with their Russian friend a couple tables down. I haven't been looking at the young thing sitting at the booth across from me & my wife would like that. Can't tell you if she has a ring in her nose, tattoos on her arm or exactly what her hair color is. All I see as I glance over are words scrawled in girlish handwriting intersperced with a few drawings in her notebook. Oh & legs.
Sorry to my wife, but it was impossible not to notice. Legs.
Just drinking drip coffee. Fuck donuts. I have em' all week at the damn work place across the street from a German donut house. No, I like the table at my booth. A picture of Wichita's old Joyland. (Have you read Stephen King's Joyland? You must.) A sign in front of the amusement park saying closed. But not me.
Let's ride it out. Write like the shit that regenerates the world.
"Ride On Sonny" -- Johnny Paycheck