Lack of Consciousness

Our housewarming party is tomorrow and I can't summon the interest to get out of bed, or into a story, or to do anything at all.

I have no money, in a frightening sort of way I've never encountered before. I used to work the restaurant back in the days when I had rent to pay, and there was always another hundred if I smiled hard enough for it.

I ought to be working on this short story but everything that comes out doesn't suit. I don't know how to write it, and I'm pitying myself, which I don't do well. Mostly it winds up me making faces at myself in the mirror. Pathetic, but true.

It's a story about a man who becomes fascinated by his bartender, because she has a poem written on her back. It's a different poem every night, and he finds out it's not a tattoo, it's a body painting, that someone paints her back every morning before she gets up. And he starts to wonder what kind of person is that captivated by their lover, and why he's never had anyone who enchanted him like that. He thinks at first he's in love with the bartender, but he's not. It's the idea of her lover that fascinates him.

It sounds stupid when I write it down. Everything sounds stupid, these days, nothing flows, nothing sounds beautiful. I used to like the shape of words but they won't work with me. Like I lost flexibility of language with the body. My body hates me these days. It won't do anything I tell it to - there's that rash on my elbows and hips - my flexibility is gone, my strength depleted, nothing is ever sore or hurting or tested. It's too damn cold to go running. I should be doing sit-ups and push-ups every evening, like I did in Italy. Even when I was stone drunk, I came back at three in the morning and blearily counted them off. My hangover preventative.

There are the children upstairs and their delightful chants in the hallway, their little goblin feet. I like their self-possession, the ease of their noisemaking. It's the lack of consciousness I admire - if I could stop worrying that every phrase sounded perfect and well-struck I could write this damned story. It's a good idea, a good image - I know because everyone seizes it, even when they past by other things. Topher as good as said I was obsessing over some of my past romantic failures and perhaps I am, but where else do we find interest in life but from what we've lived?

Here are the stories I am wanting to write:

The Body Painter
When We Play Kings
Circe

That's the order, at any rate. There are others but I want to finish those first, they're the closest to understanding themselves. That doesn't make any sense but it's true.