I’ve been out of my mind for days. Or should I say in my mind. Nuts. Crazed. In shrink lingo: Harsh interjects. In my lingo: Up the wazoo. Everybody hates me. I look in the mirror: Horror show. The lamentable list goes on and on. To make matters worse: Outside, the Santa Ana’s seem to be raging just for me and my foul self-loathing state of mind. The air smells like fire. The other night when I woke up I thought drones were hovering over our house: That’s how the wind buzzed and whistled. Branches are down all over town. Red lights are broken. For gentle readers who do not live in California, there’s nothing quite like the winds that blow in from the East. The ones, I’m sorry to say happen way more often than they used to. It’s always Santa Ana season now. I wonder what Raymond Chandler would have to say on the subject.
But this has been worse than the usual Santa Ana disturbance. My writing often mildly sucks. This past week, it really sucks. I hate every single word I’ve written. Not much to hate because I’ve erased more than I’ve typed. Everything is forced. I’m too disturbed to cook. I’ve been living on take out and kombucha. My husband is no help whatsoever. He’s off on one of those pilot benders. Truly, there’s nothing worse than pilots for film editors and their families. He surfaced briefly yesterday and had suitcases—not bags—underneath his eyes. Henry was glad to see him. He yipped and leaped and brought him the rope to play tug-y. Henry’s easy. Me, I’m always pissed off at him when he goes off on these benders. It’s like being married to an alchy, but because money and networks not booze and bars are involved, everybody is supposed to say it’s ok. It’s just the way it is. It’s the biz. It comes with the territory. And it’s work.
What makes matters worse is I know I have no cause to complain because as Kafka said, “So long as you have food in your mouth you have solved all questions for the time being.” Indeed, thanks to pilot season and all its discontents, the wolf is not at the door. There’s even a.c. if the air is too fiery.
Why is it that blessings are in a way as hard–if not harder to bear—than true misfortune? When the vrai shit hits the fan some of us feel it is what we deserve and even if we didn’t, we knew it was coming. Certainly Kafka did.
Be careful what you kvetch about. Be careful what you say is awful because the powers who control awful-ness could suddenly remind you of how lucky you’ve been. And how truly horrific things could really be. I know that. I know that all too well.
Two people I love are ill. I’m not ill, no one in my immediate family and circle is ill. That in itself is something to rejoice. To raise the wineglass, to say as Jews are meant to this Friday night, dayenu. It would have been enough.
But I’m not having Passover this year as I usually do, because in a race between the pilot and the Passover dinner, the pilot is going to win.
And anyway, now, suddenly it’s over. The small merde is not hitting the fan; I’m no longer out of control and crazy. This morning I woke up and felt just fine… for no reason at all. It’s still hot as hell outside. The air is still full of fire. But that doesn’t seem to be so freaking central. After I walked Henry, I sat down at my computer and opened up the novel I’ve been working on and my main character who had not sung to me, not once in all these months, began to sing so to speak. I could hear him. I could actually hear his words and could read his mind. He seemed familiar. It wasn’t forced. Whatever he was doing felt just fine and what he would be doing. Dayenu.
When this happens in a yoga practice you call it flow. When it happens in a writing practice it’s also called flow.
What a difference a day makes. Twenty-four little hours.
In honor of that, I watched the great Dinah Washington perform the song. Gotta say, I adore Utube. I watched it once, twice, three times! Since then, I’ve been singing it all day. And I hope I’ll be singing it tomorrow. Remember, no matter how bad it is, things could always get worse. Or they could get better too…
by 
